IB DP Internal Assessment Home Tutor in Dubai

Parents often ask what the IA is, and the honest answer is that there is no such thing as the IA. There are internally assessed components, one or more per subject, each with its own name, format, limit and criteria. A DP2 student in Dubai is typically carrying six of them simultaneously. The table below is the map for the subjects we are asked about most.

Two features of that map matter more than the rest. The first is that the limits are real constraints rather than guidance. A 3,000-word scientific investigation is not improved by 3,600 words, and a Mathematics exploration that runs to thirty pages has usually buried its mathematics in commentary. Working inside the limit from the first draft is a skill, and it is one of the few things a tutor can teach quickly.

The second is that weightings vary by subject and by syllabus version. A component can be worth a different share at standard and higher level in the same subject, and the IB revises subject guides on a rolling cycle, so a figure accurate for one cohort can be wrong for the next. This page therefore names formats and criteria, which are stable, and tells you to confirm the weighting in your own subject's current guide. That is not evasion. A wrong percentage on a page like this leads a family to spend a term on the wrong component.

What the map is for is triage. Once you can see all six components side by side with their limits and their criteria, the question stops being which subject is hardest and becomes which component is closest to the next band for the least work. That is usually not the subject the student is most worried about. It is often the one where a thin evaluation section is costing marks that an afternoon could recover.

Moderation is the last piece worth understanding. The teacher marks, the school submits a sample, and the IB moderates that sample, which can move the whole cohort's marks up or down. This is why teachers in Dubai set internal deadlines well before any IB deadline, and why extensions are harder to obtain than students expect. The deadline on the school calendar is a marking deadline, not an administrative one.

The scientific investigation in Biology, Chemistry and Physics is marked on four criteria carrying six marks each, twenty-four in total. Because the weights are equal, the arithmetic is unusually clean: a student with a strong method and a weak evaluation is leaving a quarter of the component on the table, and the evaluation is the shortest section to fix.

Research design is where most Dubai students lose their first marks, and it happens before any measurement. The criterion rewards a focused research question, a method that could actually answer it, and controlled variables that are genuinely controlled. Reports written after the data was gathered read differently from reports planned in advance, and examiners and moderators recognise the difference instantly. A method invented retrospectively to explain existing numbers is the single most common structural fault we see.

Data analysis rewards correct processing, sensible presentation and the honest treatment of uncertainty. In Physics this means propagating uncertainties rather than quoting the instrument's precision once and forgetting it. In Chemistry it means processed values with units and appropriate significant figures. In Biology it means a statistical treatment that suits the data rather than the one the student has heard of. Graphs chosen to look impressive rather than to show the relationship cost marks here too.

Conclusion rewards an answer to the stated research question, supported by the processed data and placed in the context of accepted scientific understanding. The failure is a conclusion that restates the hypothesis and then asserts that it was supported, with no reference to the magnitude of the effect or to the comparison literature.

Evaluation is the cheapest six marks in the DP sciences and the most frequently abandoned. It rewards a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the method and realistic, specific improvements. "Human error" and "more trials" earn nothing. Naming the particular limitation of the particular apparatus, explaining how it would propagate into the result, and proposing a change that would actually address it earns a great deal - and it can be written in an evening by a student who knows what the descriptor asks for.

The exploration is marked on five criteria worth twenty marks between them, and the allocation is uneven in a way that is worth knowing. Use of mathematics carries the largest share. Presentation and mathematical communication carry four marks each. Personal engagement and reflection carry three each. A student who spends a weekend on typesetting is competing for four marks while the six-mark criterion goes unaddressed.

Use of mathematics is the criterion that decides most grades. It asks for mathematics commensurate with the course, correct throughout, and thorough. Both halves of that bite. An exploration using only material from the first year of the course cannot reach the top band however elegantly it is presented, and an exploration reaching for advanced material it then applies incorrectly scores worse than a correct piece of course-level work. Analysis and Approaches students at higher level should be reaching beyond the syllabus carefully, not decoratively.

Personal engagement is where Dubai students most often lose marks that cost nothing to earn. The criterion rewards genuine evidence that the student chose this topic and did something of their own with it - their own data, their own question, their own attempt at something that did not work. A topic lifted from a list of exploration ideas reads as such, because there is no decision anywhere in the document.

Reflection asks for critical evaluation of the mathematics and the results as they develop, not a paragraph at the end. The strongest explorations reflect in place: a result appears, the student questions whether the model fits, tests it, and explains why they then changed approach. The weakest have a concluding section headed reflection which summarises what was done.

Mathematical communication and presentation are the remaining eight marks and they are genuinely gettable. Consistent notation, defined variables, labelled graphs, a coherent structure and no unexplained symbols. These are rules rather than skills, which makes them the fastest marks in the component to recover in a final read-through - and the ones most often lost by a student who ran out of time because the method was still changing in the final week.

Across every subject the same five faults recur, and they are diagnosable in a first session. Knowing them is useful for a parent because it separates problems that need weeks from problems that need an evening, and most families are told everything needs weeks.

The first is a question the method cannot answer. It affects sciences, Geography, Psychology and Business Management equally, and it is fatal because every later criterion depends on it. A question about an effect too small to measure with school equipment, or a company whose data is not public, produces a competent report with nothing to analyse. This is why the design clinic exists and why it has to come before data collection.

The second is description where evaluation belongs. It is the single most widespread fault in the DP, and it has a mechanical test: count the paragraphs that report something and the paragraphs that weigh something. If the first number is much larger, the component is capped regardless of presentation. The repair is slow but it is a repair, not a rewrite - the student learns to ask what follows from this and what would have to be true for it to be wrong.

The third is the limit, treated as an afterthought. A 3,000-word report cut down from 4,200 words has almost always lost its evaluation, because evaluation is the easiest section to compress. The same thing happens to the reflection in a Mathematics exploration. Writing to the limit from the start protects the sections that carry marks.

The fourth is deadline collision, which is a planning failure rather than an academic one. Three IA deadlines and an Extended Essay submission in one six-week window, overlapping with mocks, is the standard Dubai DP2 experience, and the students who come through it well are the ones who sequenced the laboratory bookings and the data collection in DP1. The fifth is silence: a student who has not spoken to the subject teacher about the specific criterion they are stuck on, because asking feels like admitting something. The teacher is the moderator of their own marks and is allowed to explain a descriptor. That conversation is free and it is frequently the whole solution.

A forward-looking plan is useless for Internal Assessment, because the binding constraints sit at the back. Teachers need time to mark, schools need time to submit samples for moderation, and the IB sets upload deadlines ahead of the examinations. Everything else gets squeezed into whatever is left, which is why Dubai students experience the DP2 autumn and winter as one continuous deadline.

This page publishes no IB dates. The IB's own site blocks automated checking, so every date in this project would be second-hand, and a wrong date here would cost a family real planning time. The table below is therefore relative, and your DP coordinator holds the authoritative internal deadlines. One email to them produces a list worth more than any generic calendar.

The sequence that works runs like this. Laboratory time, fieldwork permissions and any primary research consents are arranged first, because they depend on other people and cannot be compressed. Data collection follows, finished well before the drafting window so a failed method can be repeated. First drafts are written inside their limits. Then the criterion-by-criterion read, then the evaluation and reflection sections written properly rather than hurriedly, then the final audit.

Two Dubai-specific collisions are worth planning around explicitly. The first is the DP1 summer, when many families are away for six or seven weeks; a student who has not collected data or settled a method before leaving loses the only uncommitted block in the two years. The second is Ramadan, when school days shorten and evening energy moves to after Iftar. Heavy drafting either side of it and lighter check-in sessions through it works better than pretending the month is normal.

The final constraint is mocks. School mock examinations usually sit inside the same window as IA deadlines, and the sensible response is to finish anything that can be finished before them rather than to plan to work through them. Students who go into mocks with two components submitted do noticeably better at both.

This is the component where the honesty line is tested hardest, because internally assessed work is produced out of sight over months and because the market contains providers who sell finished pieces. One site found during research for this project advertises completed internal assessments at a published price. Buying assessed work is malpractice under IB rules, the penalty falls on the student rather than the seller, and it can end a diploma. So the boundary belongs on the page in plain words.

A tutor may teach the subject content the component depends on, explain each criterion and what its descriptor actually requires, help a student test whether a proposed method can answer their question, teach the statistics or the uncertainty treatment, read a draft and say which criterion is underserved, point at a paragraph that reports rather than evaluates, explain citation conventions, and teach the same skills on a practice task the student will never submit. All of that is teaching, and authorship stays where it belongs.

A tutor may not supply a research question, hand over data, write or rewrite any section, restructure a student's text for them, produce a model report to be adapted, or fill in a reflection. Our working test is whether the student could have produced every sentence and could explain every choice if asked. We do not produce assessed work and we say so before a first session, not after an awkward request.

There is a second reason to care beyond the rules. A teacher who marks thirty of the same component knows what a student's own writing sounds like, and a draft that arrives suddenly polished invites exactly the conversation no family wants. Students who work in one shared document with a full version history have an easy answer: the record shows the argument developing across weeks, with the tutor's comments visible as questions rather than as text.

One more boundary worth naming: published syllabus documents, past papers, mark schemes and subject guides are not ours to distribute. We cite them and link the official source rather than supplying copies. Where a student has used any generative tool in the course of their work, their school's policy governs how that is declared, and a tutor's job is to point them at the policy.

Below are the AED bands visible in this market as of October 2026 with the publisher of each figure named, arranged by the kind of IA work rather than by tier. Three of the six best-ranking pages for these searches publish no price at all and the rest quote US dollars, so a sourced AED table is the most useful thing this page can carry. These are market rates, not an IB Gram price list; our own rate is quoted after the free trial once the subject match is known.

The economics of IA help are different from subject tutoring, and the difference saves money. A design clinic is one or two hours and it protects the whole component, because a method fault cannot be fixed after data collection. A single-component block is three to five hours and is where subject specialism genuinely matters - a generalist cannot assess the data-analysis criterion of a Physics report. A final read is one or two hours at a general rate. A family buying those three things for two components spends less than a family buying a weekly hour across DP2, and usually gets more marks, because the work lands on the criteria instead of on the syllabus.

For context against the wider market: EdFlik advertises from AED 45-65 an hour and Tutopiya from AED 33-52 at the budget end; Unitors publishes IGCSE from AED 150 and IB from AED 200; TutorChase publishes AED 270; Bestimate's Tutoring Cost Dubai 2026 table puts in-home visits at AED 180-350 and specialist support at AED 200-450 or more; BartyED publishes AED 650. Monthly packages in this market sit around AED 799 for eight online sessions and AED 1,599 to AED 1,799 for four two-hour in-home sessions.

Three things to check before comparing two quotes. Whether VAT is included, because providers here are inconsistent. Whether the person reading a science or mathematics component actually teaches that subject, and how that was verified. And what any claim about examiner experience rests on - examiner status gives nobody access to marking decisions or grade boundaries, and a rate justified on that basis is a claim about a specific person that you are entitled to test.

A note on the household context: KHDA confirmed in May 2026 that private school fees in Dubai would not increase for the 2026-27 academic year, under Dubai's second economic incentives package. Against a flat fee bill, a handful of deadline-shaped IA blocks across DP2 is a visible, finite line rather than an open commitment, and it is worth planning as one.

The search phrase is home tutor, so the comparison belongs on the page. An in-home tutor in Dubai is a real option that some families should take; the rate is higher because the drive is inside it. IB Gram does not offer home visits in Dubai, and home visits are a service we run only in India. For Internal Assessment the online format wins on three specific grounds rather than on general preference.

The first is the artefact. IA work is a document, a spreadsheet and a set of graphs. Reading a Physics investigation properly means looking at the raw data, the processed columns, the uncertainty calculations and the graph together, and changing one to see what happens to another. That is a screen-sharing task. A printed draft on a dining table cannot show whether a propagated uncertainty was calculated or typed.

The second is subject depth at a specific criterion. The person who can tell a student that their statistical test does not suit their data, or that their exploration is working below course level, is a subject teacher of that subject. The probability that such a person lives within a short drive of Town Square or Dubai Investment Park and is free on a Tuesday evening is low. Online matching makes the pool everyone who teaches the subject rather than everyone who can reach the villa.

The third is the deadline shape. IA support is needed in bursts: two hours this week because the method needs fixing before the laboratory slot, nothing for a month, then three hours in the fortnight before submission. Booking bursts from a tutor whose income depends on standing weekly visits is awkward; booking them online is routine. During mocks, Ramadan or a family trip the pattern shifts again without anyone losing a slot.

Where in-home is genuinely better: a younger student who needs an adult present to stay on task, or a household where supervising screen work is difficult. That rarely describes a DP2 student processing their own data. If someone at the door is what you need, we would rather tell you now that this is not that service.

Private schools in Dubai are regulated by KHDA, which u.ae describes as responsible for enhancing and overseeing the quality of private education in the emirate. KHDA inspects annually and publishes a band from Outstanding down to Very Weak, which is a reasonable first filter for a family choosing a school and tells you nothing about how much IA instruction time a DP class actually receives.

That instruction time is squeezed by a real requirement. KHDA mandates Arabic, Islamic Education and Social or Moral Studies in all Dubai private schools regardless of the licensed international curriculum, with implementation required from the start of the 2025-26 academic year. The guidelines calculate instructional time on a forty-minute lesson unit, allow schools to vary lesson length provided the weekly total is met, advise that no mandatory lesson runs shorter than twenty-five minutes, and require separate classes for Arabs and non-Arabs in Arabic as a first language, Islamic Education and Social Studies because the curriculum expectations and language of instruction differ. Schools must also ensure teachers of Islamic Education and Arabic hold the appropriate KHDA approval for those subjects.

Stack that against six DP subjects with internally assessed components and the arithmetic explains the market. There is no spare lesson time in which a teacher can take thirty students through a criterion descriptor individually, so the explaining happens in written comments, and students who do not read comments well arrive in DP2 not knowing what evaluation means. Most of the demand we see in Dubai is that gap rather than subject weakness.

The regulator map differs across the country, which matters because Dubai families move. Abu Dhabi and Al Ain are regulated by ADEK, Sharjah by the Sharjah Private Education Authority, Ras Al Khaimah by its Department of Knowledge, and Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah by the federal Ministry of Education. Sharjah's and Ras Al Khaimah's authorities also approve tuition fees, curricula, programmes and assessment methods. IB Gram holds no permit, registration or authorisation from any of these bodies, and nothing here should be read as a regulator endorsing a tutoring service; a KHDA educational services permit is a specific licence for training institutes with premises in Dubai, which is a different thing entirely.

The question parents should actually ask concerns the tutor rather than the platform. Private tuition in the UAE runs on a work permit introduced by Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023, granted free of charge for two years. Eligible applicants include teachers registered in government or private schools, government and private-sector employees, unemployed residents, university students and school students aged fifteen to eighteen. Individuals tutoring without a permit are subject to fines and penalties under the applicable laws; no fine schedule is published anywhere official, so nobody should be quoting you an amount. MoHRE's own service page, Issuance of a New Work Permit - Private Tutor Licensing, is the official route and lists a two-working-day completion time. In Abu Dhabi, ADEK's professional-ethics rules additionally bar school staff from paid private tutoring of students enrolled at their own school - press-reported rather than quoted here, and worth checking against the current policy document. The practical consequence for a Dubai family is simple: never arrange for your child's own subject teacher to be paid to mark the component they will be marking officially.