IB IGCSE Tutor for Kings School Nad Al Sheba Students in Dubai

IGCSE tutoring in Dubai costs between roughly AED 240 and AED 2,000 or more per month for one subject, depending on tier, format and who is teaching. That is a wide range and it is not arbitrary: each band corresponds to a different kind of arrangement, and knowing which band you are being quoted from is more informative than any conversation about quality.

The figures that follow are market rates published by the providers and surveys named, not an IB Gram price list. Packages seen in Dubai include around AED 799 a month for eight online sessions, working out near AED 100 an hour, and AED 1,599 to 1,799 a month for four two-hour in-home visits, which is about AED 200 to 225 an hour. The Bestimate survey for Dubai gives monthly estimates for weekly one-hour sessions of AED 240 to 600 at the budget end, AED 600 to 1,200 in the middle, and AED 1,000 to over 2,000 for specialist examination-year support.

Converting between the two framings is the useful discipline. An AED 799 package of eight sessions is cheaper per hour than a mid-band weekly arrangement, because eight sessions a month is twice the frequency; the monthly figure is higher and the hourly figure lower. An in-home package at AED 1,799 for four two-hour visits delivers eight hours, the same as the online package, at more than double the price, and the difference is travel rather than teaching.

None of these bands comes with published outcome data. No ranking provider in this market publishes a statistic with a sample size, a date and a method, which means a higher monthly figure is a claim about positioning rather than evidence of effect. The table sets out the bands with their sources so a quote can be placed against them before anything is agreed.

Two monthly invoices for the same hourly rate can differ by a third, and the difference lives in the terms. The first question is how many sessions a month contains. Four is the usual assumption, five happens in long months, and three happens when a holiday lands badly. A provider billing a flat monthly figure regardless is charging for five sessions in some months and three in others, and over a year that is not neutral.

The second question is marking. A session spent going through a paper the pupil sat the previous week implies somebody marked it, and marking takes time. In some arrangements that time is inside the monthly figure; in others it is billed separately or simply not done, in which case the session is spent marking live and the teaching hour has become a marking hour. Asking directly is a thirty-second conversation that materially changes value.

The third is what happens to unused sessions. A package bought in advance with no rollover means a month disrupted by illness, travel or a school trip is a month partly paid for and partly used. A month that rolls over, or a month billed for sessions taken, behaves differently. Neither arrangement is wrong, but a family that has not asked will discover the answer in the month it matters.

The fourth is notice. The commonest leak in a Dubai tutoring budget is a notice period on an arrangement that has stopped being useful: a month's notice on a monthly commitment means paying for a month of sessions nobody wants. Ask what notice applies, in writing, before the first invoice. The table lists the items worth settling and what a good answer sounds like.

The sibling arithmetic is where Dubai monthly budgets most often break, and it is rarely discussed because providers price per child. A household with a Year 11 candidate and a Year 9 pupil running two mid-band weekly arrangements is looking at AED 1,200 to 2,400 a month before anything intensive happens. Running both at full intensity through the same spring is the most expensive version of every plan available.

The lever is sequencing rather than sharing. The Year 11 candidate has a fixed external deadline; the Year 9 pupil does not. Front-loading the younger child's work into the autumn and the following summer, while the older child's months are concentrated into the spring, flattens the peak without reducing what either receives. It requires a plan for the household rather than a plan per child, which is the thing nobody sells.

Sharing a session is the other option and it should be understood honestly. Small-group rates in Dubai run around AED 100 to 150 per pupil, against AED 200 to 450 for one-to-one specialist work, so the saving is real. What is lost is diagnosis: a session pitched between two children's gaps addresses neither precisely, and the whole argument for specialist rates is that the hour targets one pupil's specific lost marks. It works for siblings genuinely at the same tier in the same subject and poorly otherwise.

One more point specific to a two-child household. The expensive overlap is not two IGCSE candidates; it is a Year 13 and a Year 11, because both series fall close together and A Level specialist rates sit higher. A family facing that combination in the same academic year should model the whole year in advance, because discovering it in February leaves no room to sequence anything. The table sets out the common household shapes.

Context changes how a monthly tutoring figure feels, and Dubai supplies an unusually clear anchor. KHDA confirmed in May 2026 that private school fees in the emirate would not rise for the 2026-27 academic year, under Dubai's second economic incentives package valued at AED 1.5 billion within an AED 2.5 billion total. For a family planning the year ahead, that means the largest line in the education budget is a known quantity.

The emirate's scale is worth knowing too, because it explains the spread of tutoring prices. KHDA counted 387,441 pupils across 227 private schools in Dubai in 2024-25, offering seventeen different curricula, and the 2026-27 intake adds seven more schools creating 16,846 places. That depth produces genuine competition on tutoring rates, which is why the published monthly range is so wide and why a quoted figure is more negotiable than it would be in a thin market.

Set against a monthly school fee, a mid-band tutoring arrangement is a meaningful but not dominant addition. Set against two such arrangements plus an intensive final quarter, it stops being marginal. The useful exercise is to write the monthly education total for the year ahead - fees, transport, tutoring, examination entries where a pupil sits any paper as a private candidate - and then decide what the tutoring line should be rather than letting it accumulate.

The last item on that list catches families out. Entry fees for examinations are normally handled through the school for a registered candidate, but a pupil sitting a paper as a private candidate, including a November retake arranged outside their school, may face separate charges through a centre. Ask the examinations officer rather than assuming, because it is a cost that arrives in a specific month and is not part of any tutoring quote.

A monthly package is not automatically better or worse value than paying per session. It is a different instrument with different risks, and the arithmetic should be done before the conditions are considered. An AED 799 package for eight online sessions is close to AED 100 an hour, which is genuinely cheaper per hour than most mid-band weekly arrangements. Whether it is cheaper in practice depends on whether eight sessions a month is what the pupil needs.

That is the first trap. Eight sessions a month is twice the frequency of a weekly arrangement, and for a narrow technique repair it is more than the work requires. A pupil who needs five sessions of written-method insistence does not need sixteen sessions across two months, and a package that delivers them has sold a low hourly rate attached to a high monthly total. Frequency should follow the diagnosis rather than the pricing structure.

The second trap is rollover. A package bought in advance assumes a month runs smoothly, and Dubai school calendars include trips, long weekends, examination weeks and in some years a Ramadan reshaping of the evening. A package with no rollover converts every disruption into a loss. A package that rolls over, or a monthly arrangement billed for sessions taken, does not. This is worth more than a modest discount on the headline figure.

The third is the exit. A notice period on a monthly package means paying for a month that is no longer useful, and the useful question is not whether notice exists but what it costs. A week is reasonable. A month, on a monthly product, means the arrangement can only ever be left at full price. Settle it in writing before the first invoice, because it is the single commonest leak in a Dubai tutoring budget.

An in-home monthly package in Dubai at AED 1,599 to 1,799 delivers eight hours across four two-hour visits. An online package at AED 799 delivers eight hours across eight sessions. The teaching time is the same and the price differs by more than double, so it is worth being precise about what the difference buys, because part of it is genuine and part of it is traffic.

The genuine part is the convenience of a single longer visit and the presence of an adult in the room. For a younger pupil who will not settle to work alone, that has value. The traffic part is substantial and specific: a tutor travelling into the Nad Al Sheba corridor or across to Dubai Hills at four in the afternoon spends between forty and seventy minutes each way, so a two-hour lesson is a four-hour commitment. Over a month that is eight hours of somebody's time inside four lessons.

The second cost is selection, and it does not appear on any invoice. An in-home tutor must live within a drivable radius, so the pool for Extended-tier Chemistry 0620 within twenty minutes of a given community is small and sometimes empty. When it is empty the arrangement becomes whoever is available rather than whoever is right, and the family is paying the in-home premium for a generalist. That is the worst value combination in the market.

Removing the car changes both. IB Gram delivers one-to-one tuition to Dubai households over live video in Gulf Standard Time, which means the tutor is chosen for the specification and tier rather than for a postcode. IB Gram does not send tutors to homes anywhere in the UAE; home visits are a service offered in India only. The table compares the two monthly shapes on the terms that actually differ.

A Dubai academic year is not uniform, and a flat monthly arrangement pays the same amount for months of very different value. The autumn of Year 10 is high value and cheap, because habits install easily and specialist availability is loose. The middle terms are low value for weekly sessions and high value for a single marked paper a month. The final quarter of Year 11 is the highest-value and most expensive window in the sequence.

Two Dubai-specific factors shape that further. Specialist availability tightens from January as the June series approaches, so the same teaching costs more and is harder to book in February than in September. And in some years the spring revision window overlaps Ramadan, when school days shorten and evenings restructure around Iftar. A family that moves sessions to a post-Iftar slot keeps the most valuable quarter intact; a family that pauses loses six weeks.

The long summer is the most underused month in the whole calendar. A pupil going into Year 11 with a known content gap is far better served by four sessions in August, when the topic can still be taught properly, than by twelve in February, when there is only time to revise what is already there. August availability is loose, rates are not firmed up, and the work is more useful. Almost nobody books it.

Mock season deserves its own line because it produces a free diagnostic. The school has already administered a timed paper under proper conditions, and the script is the most valuable document in the process. One month built round reading those scripts properly, across all subjects, often prevents two months of misdirected work. The table sets out the year as a buying plan rather than as a calendar.

Some things should never appear on a tutoring invoice at any monthly figure. Written, edited or supplied coursework is the clearest. One page ranking in this market sells completed Internal Assessments at a published price, which is a malpractice trigger rather than a service, and the exposure falls on the candidate whose qualification is at stake. A tutor teaches, questions, models and marks the pupil's own work.

Files of past papers, mark schemes, grade-boundary tables or syllabus documents should not be supplied either. Cambridge, Pearson and the IB own that material, and the correct behaviour is to link the official page. A provider offering a folder of mark schemes as part of a package has told you how it treats rules in general, which is worth knowing before a monthly commitment is made.

Nor should an invoice rest on claims nobody can substantiate. No provider in this market publishes outcome data with a sample size, a date and a method, so a satisfaction percentage or a claim about the proportion of pupils reaching top grades is a marketing figure rather than evidence. A promise of a specific grade is a reason to walk away. And 'KHDA-approved tutors' is the most dangerous phrase in Dubai tutoring advertising: a KHDA Educational Services Permit is issued to training institutes with premises, and no online matching platform holds one.

What a family is entitled to check is the permit that genuinely exists. Private tutoring in the UAE is regulated: the private tuition work permit was introduced by Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023, is issued through MoHRE, and is granted free of charge for two years. MoHRE's service page, Issuance of a New Work Permit - Private Tutor Licensing, lists no fee and a two-working-day completion time. Because it costs nothing, a provider citing licensing costs in its rate has misread its own paperwork. Individuals tutoring without a permit are subject to fines and penalties under the applicable laws; no amounts are published.

Mathematics, the sciences and the essay subjects at both Cambridge and Pearson tiers are well covered in this set, and a match is usually quick. Thinner briefs exist: Computer Science 0478 with Cambridge pseudocode conventions, Additional Mathematics 0606, Arabic as a first language, or an unusual literature text list. In a given week the honest answer may be that nobody suitable is free, and that is better said than filled with a generalist at the same monthly figure.

Three outcomes are possible and a family should be told which applies before any month is agreed. The brief is covered and a trial lesson is scheduled within days. The brief is covered by a specialist working into Gulf Standard Time from outside the UAE, which is disclosed rather than hidden behind a local-looking telephone number. Or the brief is not currently covered, in which case it is named. Rates do not change because a tutor is based outside the UAE.

On tax: this page does not state the UAE VAT treatment of tuition fees, because doing so would require a Federal Tax Authority citation and the position turns on the provider's own registration and the nature of the service. What a family can reasonably require is a quoted monthly AED figure with a plain statement of whether VAT is included, excluded or not applicable, plus a tax registration number if the provider holds one. A provider who will not put that in writing has answered a different question.

The first month is deliberately small. A free trial lesson is one session, with no card details required, and the useful thing to bring is your child's last marked paper rather than a description of the problem. From there the honest shape is a single diagnostic month with no automatic continuation, ending in a written recommendation that states how many further months are justified, in which subject, and at what monthly figure. If that recommendation is 'none', that is a legitimate and valuable outcome.