IB MYP Tutor in Al Furjan

Dubai market rates are the same whatever the programme, so the figures a parent will be quoted for Middle Years work come from the same published bands as everything else. A qualified subject tutor online runs AED 150 to 300 per hour, with Unitors publishing IB from AED 200. In-home one-to-one including travel runs AED 180 to 350 per Bestimate's Dubai table, with independent home tutors advertising AED 200 to 500. Those are market figures read in October 2026.

What changes at Middle Years level is the quantity needed, and that is where the real saving sits. A single diagnosis session on a marked task costs one hour. A weekly session through MYP 4 at mid-market rates across a thirty-six week year is roughly AED 5,400 to 10,800. Both are modest against the Diploma pattern of two or three sessions a week in the spring of Diploma 2 at specialist rates of AED 300 to 450.

The reason the earlier spending works harder is that it buys habits rather than content. Showing process, answering the criterion as written, documenting decisions, and structuring a written response are the skills every Diploma Internal Assessment later assumes. A student who arrives in Diploma 1 with them needs a weekly session; a student who arrives without them needs a block in every subject.

Bestimate's monthly estimates make the comparison concrete: AED 240 to 600 a month for budget provision, AED 600 to 1,200 for mid-market, and AED 1,000 to 2,000 or more for specialist exam-year support. Middle Years work sits in the middle band and exam-year Diploma work in the top one. Spending in the middle band for two years is cheaper than spending in the top band for one, and it produces a better result.

The single most useful thing a parent can learn about the Middle Years Programme is that every subject group assesses four criteria, each marked out of eight against published descriptors, and the 1 to 7 grade on the report is derived from those totals. The criteria are not the same across subjects. Criterion B means investigating patterns in mathematics and organizing in language and literature, which are entirely different demands.

Once you know the letters for your child's subject, a report card becomes readable. A student with a 6 on criterion A and a 3 on criterion C in the sciences does not have a science problem; they have a data processing and evaluation problem. A student with strong C and D and weak A in language and literature writes well and does not analyse. Those are different interventions, and neither is addressed by revising the unit content.

This is also the test to apply to any Middle Years tutor before paying them. Ask them to name the four criteria in the subject group your child needs. Someone who teaches the programme answers immediately. Someone who teaches the subject generally will talk about topics, which tells you they will prepare your child for an assessment that does not exist in this programme.

The table below sets out the four criteria for each of the eight subject groups, which is information almost no competitor page in this market publishes. Taking it to a parent-teacher meeting with a marked task in hand changes the conversation from a general one about effort into a specific one about a strand descriptor and what it asks for.

A Middle Years report card full of 4s is the most common reason an Al Furjan family contacts a tutor, and the most commonly misdiagnosed. A 4 in the MYP conversion is a respectable middling grade, and it is what a student receives when they demonstrate understanding without doing the specific thing the criterion descriptor asks for. The content is there. The evidence the criterion wants is not.

The pattern repeats across subject groups in recognisable forms. In mathematics, a student finds the pattern, gives the right answers, and never states a general rule or justifies it, which is most of criterion B. In the sciences, data is presented rather than processed and the evaluation section lists equipment complaints instead of analysing the method, which caps criterion C. In individuals and societies, evidence is summarised rather than weighed, which is criterion D.

None of those is fixed by covering the topic again, which is what a general tutor will do because it is what the student will ask for. They are fixed by reading one marked task against the strand descriptors, identifying the gap, and practising the specific behaviour the descriptor names. That is usually one diagnostic session and then a term of deliberate practice inside normal school work.

This is also why self-management belongs in this conversation. Approaches to learning skills are taught explicitly in the MYP and appear inside criterion descriptors, and self-management is the one that most often explains a flat report. A student submitting work that is complete but unplanned and unrecorded scores below their understanding in every process-assessed subject at once, which looks like a general ability problem and is not.

The Personal Project is completed in the final Middle Years year, supervised in school and externally moderated. It is the first substantial independent piece a student produces, and it is assessed on the process as much as the outcome: how the goal was set, what was researched, which decisions were taken and why, and how honestly the result was evaluated against the student's own stated criteria.

The failure mode is consistent. A student with an ambitious goal produces something impressive and keeps no record of how, then writes the report afterwards from memory. The result scores below a modest project with a full process journal, because the marks are available for the documented process and are not available retrospectively. Nobody can reconstruct six months of decisions in a fortnight, and markers can tell when it has been attempted.

That makes the highest-value session the earliest one, exactly as with the Diploma Internal Assessments this stage prepares students for. One hour spent asking whether the goal is achievable, what will be recorded, and how success will be judged protects more marks than five hours spent on the report. Al Furjan families who ask for help in the final term are usually asking too late for the money to work hard.

The boundary here is the same one that applies throughout the IB and we state it at the first session. A tutor may read the criteria with the student, question the goal, teach research and reflection technique, show how a documented process looks, and give written feedback on the student's own work. A tutor may not produce any part of the project or the report, or outline it for the student to fill in.

Not every Middle Years subject is worth paying a tutor for, and saying so is more useful than listing all eight as options. Mathematics and the sciences repay support most reliably, because their criteria are explicit, their gaps are diagnosable from a marked task, and the habits built there carry directly into Diploma Internal Assessments. These are also where an unaddressed weakness closes Higher Level doors two years later.

Language and literature repays support where the issue is criterion A, analysing. A student who writes fluently and describes rather than analyses has a specific, teachable gap worth a short block of sessions. Language acquisition repays support mainly for speaking, where the barrier is fluency under timing rather than vocabulary, and where practice with a patient specialist is genuinely hard to arrange otherwise.

Individuals and societies is worth supporting for criterion D, thinking critically, which is the strand separating grades and the one least often taught explicitly. Design and arts are different: their marks sit largely in documented process, so what the student usually needs is a habit and a template rather than a term of teaching. Two or three sessions on process journalling often does the whole job.

Physical and health education rarely needs paid support, though its written criteria surprise families who assume the subject is assessed on performance alone. Interdisciplinary units and service as action are generally school-managed and not sensible tutoring purchases. A provider willing to tell you which of the eight not to buy is giving you more information than one offering all eight equally.

The first and largest waste is paying a subject rate for homework supervision. A Middle Years student who works steadily through set tasks with a tutor beside them is being invigilated at AED 200 an hour. If the household needs someone to make sure the work happens, that is a different and far cheaper service, and conflating the two is how a monthly invoice grows without a single criterion score moving.

The second is session length chosen for the invoice. Ninety-minute sessions feel substantial and are wrong for a twelve-year-old, who concentrates hard for forty-five minutes and then performs. Two forty-five minute sessions at the same weekly cost retain more and allow set work to be checked between them. Families buy the long session because it looks like better value per booking, which it is not.

The third is buying all four or five academic subjects at once because the report card was flat across them. A flat report is more often a self-management or process problem than four separate subject problems, and buying four tutors treats the symptom four times. One diagnosis session on two marked tasks from different subjects usually reveals the common cause.

The fourth is the travel premium, which applies here as everywhere in this corridor. Published in-home rates of AED 180 to 500 an hour against AED 150 to 300 online reflect the drive into the villa districts rather than any difference in teaching. For Middle Years students above about MYP 2 there is no pedagogical case for physical presence that outweighs having a wider choice of subject-group specialist.

The end of the Middle Years Programme has two possible shapes and families should know which applies before planning MYP 5. Some schools enter students for the optional on-screen examinations and ePortfolios leading to the IB MYP Certificate; others end MYP 5 with school-assessed criteria and the Personal Project alone. The coordinator can confirm which, and the answer changes what the final year's support should target.

Where eAssessments are sat, the on-screen examinations reward applying knowledge to unfamiliar stimulus material rather than reproducing taught content. That is a distinct skill and it is the one to practise, which means working with unseen material under timing rather than reviewing units. Students who are strong in school assessments and weak on unfamiliar stimulus are common and the gap is trainable.

Where they are not sat, the useful work in MYP 5 is the transition ahead. For students continuing into the Diploma, that means the habits the Internal Assessments will assume: stating a method, processing data, documenting a process, evaluating honestly. For students moving to IGCSE at another school, which several families in this corridor do at 16, it means exam technique and the mark-scheme conventions the MYP never taught.

That second case is worth naming because it is specific to this part of Dubai. Full IB Diploma provision in the Jebel Ali and Dubai South corridor is thinner than further north, so Al Furjan families frequently change schools after MYP 5, and some change curriculum as well. Four to six sessions over the summer on the conventions of the new system removes most of the first-term shock.

The Middle Years Programme is assessed almost entirely on work produced in school, which puts the boundary on help at the centre of the arrangement rather than at its edge. An IB Gram tutor teaches technique, reads criteria with the student, questions a plan or a goal, demonstrates method, gives written feedback on the student's own work, and records what was covered. That is the territory, and in this programme most of the available marks sit inside it.

What a tutor will not do is produce work for submission. No written tasks, no Personal Project content, no process journal entries, no completed investigations, and no outlines for a student to fill in. At least one provider in this market sells completed internal assessments at a fixed price; submitted work that is not the student's own is malpractice, and the exposure falls on the student rather than on the seller.

We also do not reproduce or distribute IB subject guides, task banks or assessment criteria documents as downloads. Criteria are discussed and explained, and sessions work from the task sheets and marked work the school has issued. Reproducing published IB material is a copyright matter and there is no reason to take it when the school's own documents are the better basis anyway.

Two further limits worth stating. We do not predict or guarantee grades, including criterion scores, and any provider doing so is selling confidence. And we do not claim approval, accreditation or partnership from the IB, KHDA, ADEK, SPEA or the Ministry of Education. IB Gram holds none of them. We explain what those bodies do, which is a different and more useful thing.