IB MYP Tutor in Dubai International Academic City

Every MYP subject is assessed against four criteria, each marked out of eight, giving thirty-two raw marks per subject before conversion to the 1 to 8 grade. The criteria are published, they have strands with descriptors, and they are the same across every IB World School running the programme. A parent who knows the four names for their child's subject can read a report properly for the first time.

They are also predictable in where they fail. In the sciences, criterion A - knowing and understanding - is usually the strongest, because it is closest to conventional content teaching. Criteria B and C, inquiring and designing and processing and evaluating, are usually the weakest, because investigation design and data evaluation are skills most schemes of work assume rather than teach. The result is a student who knows the science and scores moderately.

In mathematics the weak criterion is almost always investigating patterns, which asks a student to find a rule, express it in correct general notation and justify it. Finding the rule is the part students can do. Expressing and justifying it is the part that scores, and it responds very quickly to teaching because the structure of a good answer is consistent.

The table below sets out the criteria for the subjects families in this cluster ask about most, with the criterion that usually costs marks and what the work on it actually looks like. Ask your school for the criterion-level breakdown and read it against this table; the two together usually make the next eight sessions obvious.

Parents in this cluster routinely ask whether a 5 is good. The honest answer is that it depends entirely on which criteria produced it, and that is why the grade alone is close to useless for planning. Four marks out of eight across all four criteria and a pattern of 7, 7, 3, 2 can produce similar overall grades while describing entirely different students with entirely different needs.

The conversion from criterion marks to the final grade uses published boundaries, and schools apply them consistently. What varies is how many assessment tasks have contributed to each criterion by the time a report is written - some criteria may have been assessed once and others three times, which makes early-year reports noisier than later ones. Ask how many times each criterion has been assessed when a mark looks surprising.

The second thing worth asking is whether the mark reflects the most recent evidence or an average across the term. MYP practice generally favours the most recent and most consistent evidence over a simple mean, because the programme is trying to report what a student can do now. A single poor task early in a term should not still be dragging a criterion mark in May, and if it appears to be, that is a reasonable question for a parents' evening.

For families new to the programme, one reassurance and one warning. The reassurance: MYP grades are not percentages and a 5 is not 50 per cent of anything. The warning: a comfortable MYP profile does not guarantee a comfortable Diploma, because the Diploma assesses a product written under time pressure rather than a skill demonstrated over a unit. That gap is the subject of the bridging section further down.

If a science report shows a strong criterion A and a weak criterion B, the work is investigation design, and it is some of the most satisfying tutoring in the programme because the improvement is fast and visible. Criterion B asks a student to formulate a testable research question, identify and explain the variables, design a method that controls what needs controlling, and justify the choices made.

Students fail it in consistent ways. The research question is not testable with the apparatus available. The independent and dependent variables are named and then the controlled variables are listed without any mention of how they will be held constant. The method has no range and interval justification, no repeats, or repeats with no stated reason. None of these is a content problem and all of them are correctable in a handful of sessions.

Criterion C, processing and evaluating, fails in a matching pattern. Data is presented without processing, or processed without uncertainty or spread, or graphed without a line of best fit. The evaluation section says that more repeats would have helped, which earns nothing, instead of identifying the largest source of error and proposing a specific change. Teaching that distinction once usually fixes it permanently.

This is also the clearest investment in Diploma readiness available in MYP 4 and 5. The Diploma's scientific investigation is assessed against research design, data analysis, conclusion and evaluation, worth twenty-four marks in total, and it asks for precisely the skills criteria B and C are building. A student who has been taught investigation design properly in MYP 5 starts the Diploma investigation ahead.

The Personal Project is the MYP's largest independent undertaking and the one most likely to go wrong in a way that is visible from the outside. It is assessed against published criteria covering planning, applying skills, reflecting and the product itself, with a process journal running throughout and a report at the end. It is also the clearest rehearsal available for the Diploma's Extended Essay.

Two failures dominate. The first is a goal too large and too vague: a student who intends to build an application, compose an album or run an event discovers in the final month that the product cannot be finished and the criteria cannot be evidenced. The remedy is a scoping conversation at the start, where the goal is tested against both assessability and the available weeks.

The second is a process journal written retrospectively. The journal is meant to be contemporaneous evidence of planning, decision-making and reflection, and a fortnight of reconstructed entries written the night before submission reads exactly like what it is. Establishing a weekly journal habit in the first month costs nothing and protects two criteria.

Our boundary here is the same as at Diploma level and worth stating plainly, because the search results this page sits in include operators who sell completed coursework. The student chooses the goal, does the work, keeps the journal and writes the report. A tutor interrogates the goal, explains what each criterion rewards, asks the questions a supervisor would ask, and comments on the student's own drafts. Nothing is supplied.

Every family in this cluster hears that the Diploma is a step up, and the statement is useless because it names nothing. The step is specific, and once it is listed it can be worked on over a summer. The MYP assesses skills against criteria with process credit and generous time; the Diploma assesses a product written in two hours against a mark scheme, which is a different activity using the same knowledge.

In mathematics the list is indices, surds, algebraic fractions, rearranging formulae with the unknown appearing twice, function notation and expanding and factorising without hesitation. The Diploma assumes all of these are automatic from the first week and then builds quickly on top of them. A student who can do them slowly will find the first Diploma term exhausting, regardless of a strong MYP 5 grade.

In writing subjects the list is essay structure under timed conditions, command-term discipline, and making an argument with evidence rather than assertion. MYP tasks reward drafting and reflection; a Diploma paper rewards a well-structured answer produced once, to time, answering precisely the command term printed on the page. Strong MYP writers are frequently caught by this, which surprises everyone including them.

In the sciences the list is the investigation skills of criteria B and C plus uncertainty handling, which the Diploma examines directly and the MYP mostly does not. Six to eight sessions across a summer covering the mathematics list and the writing list is the highest-value tutoring in this programme, and it is bought by almost nobody because the subject it helps has not started.

Many MYP schools split mathematics into standard and extended routes in MYP 4, and the decision is usually made by the school at the end of MYP 3 on the basis of performance against criterion A and criterion B. It is a quiet decision with a long tail, because the extended route builds the algebraic fluency that Analysis and Approaches at Higher Level later assumes.

This is not a hard gate in the way an IGCSE tier is - a student on the standard route can still take Diploma mathematics - but the practical effect is real. The extended route spends more time on the manipulation that the Diploma treats as given, so a standard-route student aiming at Analysis and Approaches at Higher Level has more bridging to do in less time, usually in the same summer as everything else.

The question to ask the school, in MYP 3 or early MYP 4, is which route they intend, what evidence informed it, and what would change their view. Schools generally respond well to the question when it is specific. Where a move upwards is worth arguing for, the evidence is marked work at the extended route under timed conditions, and a targeted term of tutoring can produce it.

For families in this cluster the practical geography matters here too. Uptown International School in Mirdif and Universal American School in Al Warqa run the MYP, and both lead into Diploma provision - Uptown within the same school. If your child may want Analysis and Approaches at Higher Level, ask the Diploma coordinator at the intended sixth form what MYP mathematics route and profile they expect, and ask while there is still time to act on the answer.

MYP students in Dubai also carry the mandatory UAE subjects, and this catches new arrivals in this cluster more than any other part of the timetable. Arabic, Islamic Education and Social or Moral Studies are mandatory in all Dubai private schools regardless of the licensed international curriculum, and KHDA's guidance states the requirements must be implemented from the start of the 2025-26 academic year.

The rules are specific. KHDA requires schools to organise separate classes for Arabs and non-Arabs in Arabic as a first language, Islamic Education and Social Studies, and states that combined classes for both groups are strictly prohibited because the curriculum expectations and language of instruction differ. Standard Arabic is required as the main language of instruction for Islamic Education for Arabs and for Arabic as a first language, with Arabic primary for Social Studies for Arab students and the school's licensed-curriculum language for non-Arabs.

Instructional time is calculated on a 40-minute lesson unit, schools may vary lesson length provided the weekly total is met, and KHDA advises that any mandatory-subject lesson should run at least 25 minutes. Schools must also ensure that teachers of Islamic Education and Arabic hold appropriate KHDA approval to teach those subjects, which is a concrete credential point a parent can ask about directly.

What constrains tutoring is a content rule: for these subjects, using any different or additional content without prior permission from the Ministry of Education is strictly prohibited. Support for Arabic as an additional language is ordinary language teaching and freely available, and in the MYP it maps onto language acquisition phases. Help with the mandatory Islamic Education and Social Studies content needs a conversation with the school about acceptable material first.

Market rates in this emirate, each attributed to the provider publishing it and read in October 2026, with none of them an IB Gram rate. Budget and university-student online tutors advertise from roughly AED 45 to 150 an hour, with EdFlik from AED 45 to 65 and Tutopiya from AED 33 to 52. For MYP content support that band genuinely contains usable help, which is less true at Diploma Higher Level. What it less often contains is criterion literacy.

Qualified subject tutors online sit at AED 150 to 300, with Unitors publishing IGCSE from AED 150 and IB from AED 200. In-home one-to-one with travel runs AED 180 to 500, per Bestimate at 180 to 350 and independent home tutors at 200 to 500. Published monthly packages include AED 799 for eight online sessions, and Bestimate's monthly estimates for a weekly hour run AED 240 to 600 at the budget end and AED 600 to 1,200 mid-range.

For the MYP specifically, the sensible purchase is usually small and targeted: a term of criterion-focused sessions in one subject, or a summer bridging block, rather than an open weekly arrangement across several subjects. A tutor who cannot name the four criteria for your child's subject is selling general secondary tutoring, which may be fine and should be priced accordingly.

What we do not claim: no office, centre or branch anywhere in the UAE; no KHDA Educational Services Permit, which is issued to training institutes with premises; no approval, accreditation, licence or partnership from KHDA, ADEK, SPEA, the Ministry of Education, MoHRE or the IB; no guaranteed grades; and no star ratings we cannot evidence. On regulation, the MoHRE private tutor work permit was introduced by Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023, is granted free of charge for two years, and tutoring without it attracts fines and penalties under the applicable laws, with no fine schedule published.