What does criterion B actually assess in Middle Years Sciences?+
Inquiring and designing. A top-band answer states a testable hypothesis with scientific reasoning behind it, identifies the independent, dependent and controlled variables, and describes a method in enough detail that another student could repeat it. What most students submit is a prediction, a list of equipment and a set of instructions. That caps the mark regardless of how good the rest of the write-up is, and it is why criterion B is the most common single loss we see in Dubai. It is also one of the fastest to fix, usually within four or five sessions.
Which criterion letters does Middle Years Mathematics use?+
Criterion A is knowing and understanding, B is investigating patterns, C is communicating and D is applying mathematics in real-life contexts. Each is marked out of eight. Students arriving in Dubai from a computational curriculum score highest on A and lowest on B and D, often with a three or four mark gap, because generalising a rule and justifying it, and modelling an unfamiliar context, are not things their previous school assessed. That profile is a mismatch rather than a weakness, and it closes faster than most parents expect once somebody names it.
Does a tutor need my child's school unit sheet to be useful?+
Yes, and it is the first thing we ask for. The unit sheet carries the key concept, the related concepts, the global context, the statement of inquiry and the criterion strands being assessed in that unit. Programme content varies between Dubai schools in a way Diploma content does not, so a tutor working without it is teaching a generic version of the topic rather than the task your child will actually be marked on. Students are issued these sheets and almost never read them, which is the cheapest fix available in the whole programme.
The school has put my daughter into extended mathematics for Year 10 - what changes?+
Content depth and the kind of question she will meet, more than the criteria themselves. The extended route carries additional topics and sets investigation tasks with less scaffolding, which pushes criterion B and D harder than the standard route does. The criteria and the 0 to 8 marking are identical. In practice the students who struggle with the move are not weaker mathematicians; they are students who were succeeding on criterion A alone, and extended material exposes that quickly. Six to eight weeks of pattern-generalisation and modelling work usually settles it.
What is a statement of inquiry and does it matter for revision?+
It is a single sentence on the unit sheet combining the key concept, the related concepts and the global context, and it matters more than almost anything else on the page. A strong extended answer is very often a defence or interrogation of that sentence. We teach students to copy it to the top of their draft and check paragraph by paragraph whether what they have written speaks to it. The gain in criterion C and D marks from that one habit is disproportionate to the effort, and it costs nothing.
Are the command terms in Middle Years tasks the same as the Diploma ones?+
Largely yes, which is why teaching them in Year 8 pays off in Year 13. Describe, explain, analyse, evaluate, justify, suggest, compare and contrast all reappear in Diploma papers with higher expectations attached. The set is closed and small, and each term demands a specific structure: explain needs a stated mechanism, evaluate needs weighed positions plus a judgement, analyse needs components and the relationship between them. A student who can name the term but not its structure has found the lesson worth buying.
How long is a Middle Years on-screen examination and what is it like?+
Where a school enters students for end-of-programme eAssessment, the on-screen examinations are timed papers sat under examination conditions on a screen rather than on paper, covering Language and Literature, Individuals and Societies, Sciences, Mathematics and the interdisciplinary assessment. The duration and the current format are published by the IB and should be confirmed with your school's coordinator. The practical preparation point is that students who have only ever practised on paper meet the interface cold, and reading extended source material on a display is a skill worth rehearsing.
What are the three criteria the Personal Project is marked against?+
Planning, applying skills and reflecting, each marked out of eight for a total of 24, and the project is externally moderated. Two of those three are about process rather than product, which explains most disappointing results in Dubai. A student who builds something impressive and writes the report afterwards has evidence for one criterion out of three. Planning marks required a documented goal, success criteria and a plan recorded as it happened; reflection marks required evidence of changing thinking, written while it changed. Neither reconstructs convincingly at the end.
Can a tutor read my son's Personal Project process journal?+
Yes, and reading it is one of the most useful things a tutor does. The tutor can check the journal for evidence against each of the three criteria, explain what a journal entry should capture and how often, and ask the questions that turn an account of events into genuine reflection. What a tutor cannot do is select the goal, develop the product, write a journal entry for the student to adopt, or supply text for submission. Our test: after the session, could he explain every sentence of his own document unaided?
My son's report shows 6, 5, 7 and 4 - which number should we act on?+
The 4, almost always, and not the subject overall. That profile totals 22 out of 32, which sits in the grade 5 band on most boundary tables. Moving the 4 to a 6 lifts the total to 24 and will usually move the grade; raising the 6 and the 5 by one each costs twice the teaching and may not. Find out which criterion the 4 belongs to, read its descriptor, and buy teaching for that one thing. It is the cheapest grade movement available in this programme.
Does the Knowledge and Human Development Authority inspect how the programme is taught?+
It inspects Dubai private schools annually on a six-band scale from Outstanding to Very Weak, and that inspection covers teaching and learning across the school rather than auditing a specific international programme's internal assessment, which the IB handles through its own processes. The authority also sets the mandatory Arabic, Islamic Education and social studies requirements that sit alongside the programme. IB Gram holds no approval or accreditation from the authority and does not claim any; we name it because it is the body whose published reports a parent can read.
How many Dubai schools actually run the Middle Years Programme?+
Fewer than families expect, given how visible the IB name is here. The Dubai Media Office reported 387,441 students across 227 private schools offering 17 curricula in 2024-25, with the International Baccalaureate accounting for 7% of enrolment against 37% for UK curricula and 26% for Indian. Continuum provision is concentrated in Al Barsha, the coastal belt, Emirates Hills and the eastern education districts. The 2026-27 intake adds seven new private schools, four UK and three International Baccalaureate, creating 16,846 new places.
Why do so many Dubai schools stop the programme at Year 9?+
Because International GCSE at sixteen is the dominant route in this market and offers an externally certificated qualification that universities and employers recognise immediately, which the final Middle Years years do not provide unless the school enters students for eAssessment. UK curricula accounted for 37% of Dubai private-school enrolment against 7% for the International Baccalaureate, so the pull is commercial as much as pedagogical. What matters for a parent is simply knowing which route their school takes for their child's year group, in writing, because the preparation differs completely.
Can Design and the Arts be taught properly over video?+
Three of the four criteria in each, yes. In Design, inquiring and analysing, developing ideas and evaluating all live in the documentation, which is exactly what a tutor can work through on a shared screen; creating the solution needs hands and a workshop. In the Arts, investigating, developing and evaluating sit in the workbook, while the performance or final piece does not. Since the documentation carries three criteria out of four, remote work covers most of the available marks. We say plainly where it cannot help rather than overclaiming.
What should a Dubai family budget for weekly support across a school year?+
Using published market figures rather than our own price list: a qualified subject tutor at AED 150 to 300 an hour works out at roughly AED 600 to 1,200 a month for one weekly session, per the Bestimate 2026 bands, and a specialist at AED 200 to 450 and above lands nearer AED 1,000 to 2,000 a month. Middle Years work usually sits in the first band rather than the second, because it is not examination-year teaching. Our own pricing conversation starts with the free first lesson rather than a quote.
Is Year 8 too early for one-to-one support, or should we wait?+
Early is cheaper, and the reason is structural. There is no external assessment in the first three years, so parents reasonably decide to wait. But the criteria being introduced in those years are the ones every later mark depends on: writing to a command term, designing an investigation, documenting a process, reflecting usefully. A student who reaches Year 10 having never written to a descriptor is not behind on content, they are behind on the entire assessment model. Six weeks of early criterion work costs less than a term of remediation later.
