IB and IGCSE tutors for International City families

The direct answer first. A school reliably supplies content coverage, modelled examples, set practice and marked assessments. It does not supply the volume of unprompted practice that converts understanding into marks, and it cannot supply individual diagnosis of why a particular student's attempts fail. Those two things are the student's half of the course, and in most cases where a diligent child underperforms, that half is missing rather than weak.

The distinction is worth making concrete. A student who can complete an exercise set after a lesson has demonstrated that they can follow a method while it is fresh. A student who can do a mixed question three weeks later, with no indication of which method applies, has demonstrated something quite different, and only the second thing is examined. Homework mostly tests the first. That is why a child can have a perfect homework record and a poor test record without anybody behaving badly.

The table splits the main subjects that way, with a fourth column that matters most for a budget: the cheapest fix that actually works. In several rows the cheapest fix is free. Past papers and mark schemes are published by the boards, and a student who works through them under timing and marks their own attempts honestly is doing the single most effective revision activity available at any price.

The one caution on doing it alone is marking. A student marking their own work tends to be generous, because they recognise what they meant rather than what they wrote. Where a paid hour earns its cost early, it is often in teaching a student to mark strictly against a scheme - which is a skill that transfers to every subject and then needs buying only once.

Most families answer this by picking the lowest grade on the report, which is the wrong method. The right question is not where the student is weakest but where an hour of expert attention converts into marks fastest, and those are different things. A subject that is weak because the student has not done the work does not need a tutor. It needs the work. A subject that is weak because a specific, identifiable step breaks every time does need a tutor, and quickly.

The sorting rule holds up well in practice. Fund the subject where the failure is specific and visible in the marked script: a method abandoned halfway, a calculation attempted in the wrong order, a question that is never started. Do not fund the subject where the failure is diffuse - a thin essay, patchy recall, content half-learned - because that responds to repeated marked practice the student can run themselves with a published scheme.

There is a second filter, which is leverage. Mathematics carries into the sciences, so fixing algebraic fluency improves three subjects at once and is usually the best single purchase in Years 10 and 11. Marking technique transfers everywhere and only has to be taught once. Command terms transfer across every written subject. A budget spent on something that transfers buys more than the same budget spent on a single subject's content.

The table gives the recommendation against the pattern you can actually see in the marked work. Use it with the script in front of you rather than with the report, because the report shows the outcome and the script shows the cause. If nothing in the table matches, the honest answer is often that no paid hour is needed yet, and that six weeks of structured self-marked practice should come first.

This is the single most consequential thing most International City parents have never been told. Cambridge runs Core and Extended routes on several IGCSE subjects, and they are not two difficulty settings on the same grade scale. A Core entry makes a narrower range of grades available than an Extended entry. A student entered on Core cannot reach the top grades no matter how well they perform, because the papers they sit do not award them.

The decision is usually taken by the school, sometimes in Year 10 and often without a conversation, and it is recorded on the entry rather than in the report. Entries are finalised months before the examination - Cambridge closes final entries for its June series in the spring, and for the November series over the preceding summer, with the exact date printed on the centre's statement of entry - so by the time a parent sees a mock result the tier may already be fixed for that series.

What a family should do is simple and free. Ask the examinations officer, in writing, for the syllabus code and the tier on each entry, and ask what the school's criteria are for moving a student between tiers and by when. If a child is on Core and heading for a sixth form that expects higher grades, that conversation needs to happen early in Year 10, not after mocks in Year 11 when the entry window has closed.

Pearson Edexcel generally runs a single tier on its International GCSE subjects, which removes this problem and introduces a different one: a student who would have been comfortable on a Core paper sits the full paper regardless. Neither arrangement is better in the abstract. What matters is knowing which arrangement your child is in, because the ceiling it sets is invisible in a school report.

A large share of students in this community sit English as a Second Language rather than First Language English, and parents are often unsure whether that matters. The straightforward position: it is a real, widely accepted qualification with its own papers and purpose, and for most students it is the right entry. It is not a lesser version of the other course; it is a different course with a different design.

Where it does matter is later, and only sometimes. Some sixth-form courses and some institutions specify First Language English or a particular grade in it, and some separately require an English proficiency test regardless of the school qualification. On the American equivalency track, for instance, English proficiency is evidenced by a score of 5 in the IELTS academic test, 61 in the TOEFL iBT, or 450 in the SAT reading and writing section - a school grade does not substitute for that.

So the useful action is to find out what the destination asks for, not to switch courses reflexively. If the student is heading towards a course that names First Language English, discuss the move with the school early, because it is a two-year course and a late switch is rarely sensible. If the destination is undecided, the stronger grade on the course the student is actually prepared for is worth more than a weak grade on a more prestigious-sounding one.

For tutoring purposes the two courses need different work. English as a Second Language rewards accuracy, register and following a task's format precisely; First Language English rewards analytical reading of an unseen text and controlled writing under timing. A tutor matched to the wrong one will teach competently and improve the wrong skills, which is another reason the entry code matters more than the subject name.

The most effective revision activity available to an IGCSE or Diploma student costs nothing. The boards publish past papers and mark schemes, and schools can supply them. A student who works through whole papers under timing and marks their own attempts strictly against the scheme will outperform a student who has twice as much tutoring and does none of this. That is not a motivational claim; it is what the practice actually produces.

It is also almost always done wrong. Students do papers topic by topic, with the book open, without timing, and mark generously because they recognise what they intended to write. Each of those four errors removes most of the benefit. Done properly the routine is narrow: whole paper, correct tier, strict timing, closed notes, then marking against the published scheme in a different colour, then a logged list of what was lost and why, retested a fortnight later.

Two rules keep it honest. First, mark to the scheme's wording rather than to your own judgement of whether the answer was reasonable - the scheme is the examiner. Second, log the reason for each lost mark in one of four categories: did not know it, knew it and misread the question, knew it and ran out of time, knew it and wrote the wrong structure for the command term. Those four categories lead to four different actions, and the log is what tells you which.

Copyright is worth a sentence. Past papers, mark schemes and subject guides belong to Cambridge, Pearson and the IB. Access them through the official sites or through your child's school rather than through a reseller, and treat any tutor offering a downloadable pack of them with caution - redistributing those materials is not theirs to do, and it says something about the rest of the operation.

Market rates in Dubai span roughly an order of magnitude, and the spread is not mostly about greed. At the bottom are university students and part-time tutors supervising homework. In the middle are qualified subject tutors teaching a named specification. At the top are specialists in a particular paper, and above them providers selling scarcity. All four exist in this market and all four are rational purchases for different problems.

The figures below were read from provider listings and a published Dubai rate survey in October 2026. They are market rates rather than an IB Gram price list; ask us for our figure before booking and hold it against the band. One piece of context worth having while budgeting: KHDA confirmed in May 2026 that private school fees in Dubai would not rise for the 2026-27 academic year, under an economic incentives package, so the school-fee side of a family budget is at least stable this year.

The judgement to make is about fit rather than price. An AED 60 hour that keeps a Year 8 student in the habit of doing their homework is good value. The same AED 60 hour pointed at a Year 11 Extended Mathematics paper is likely to be poor value, because the tutor may not know the tier, the paper structure or the mark scheme well enough to diagnose anything. Paying a specialist rate for homework supervision is the opposite error and just as common.

Two warning signs are worth knowing in the cheaper part of the market. A tutor who cannot tell you which syllabus code they teach is not teaching to one. And a tutor who has not heard of the MoHRE private tuition work permit is unlikely to hold it, which is a reasonable thing to ask about, since the permit is free of charge and takes two working days to obtain.

There is no large school inside International City itself, so every secondary student here is on a bus. The two main directions are north-east into Al Warqa, Al Qusais and Al Mizhar, and south into Silicon Oasis and Academic City, with a smaller flow along the creek to the Garhoud and Festival City schools. Those destinations sit on different boards and different curricula, which is the fact that matters for tutoring.

The recurring error follows from it. A parent describes their child's course by subject and year group, a tutor is matched on that, and several sessions in it becomes clear the tutor has been teaching a different specification. Cambridge and Pearson differ in paper structure, in tiering and in what appears on the formula sheet. Indian-curriculum schools differ from both. The fix is one question to the examinations officer, and it is free.

Some scale for context: KHDA counted 227 private schools and 387,441 pupils in Dubai in 2024-25 across seventeen different curricula, with the British route largest by enrolment and the IB around 7% of enrolment. Dubai is adding seven new private schools for 2026-27, four British and three IB, creating 16,846 places. The mix in a community's school list is therefore something that keeps changing rather than settling.

One clarification about the regulator, because parents sometimes assume more than is there. KHDA licenses and inspects Dubai private schools and publishes inspection outcomes on a six-band scale from Outstanding to Very Weak. It does not license private tutors, and no tutoring platform is inspected under that framework. A school's band describes the school. IB Gram claims no approval, accreditation or licensing from KHDA or from any board.

Private tutoring in the UAE is regulated. The MoHRE private tuition work permit was introduced by Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023, and it is granted free of charge for two years. Eligible applicants include teachers registered in government or private schools, employees in the government and private sectors, unemployed individuals, university students and school students aged fifteen to eighteen. MoHRE lists the application with no fee and a two-working-day completion time.

Because the permit costs nothing and takes two days, a tutor who does not hold it has usually not looked into the rules at all - and the same person is often the one who cannot say which syllabus code they teach. That is the real signal in a very low rate. It is not that cheap tutoring is illegitimate; plenty of permitted, competent tutors charge modestly. It is that the absence of the permit tends to travel with the absence of everything else you want to check.

Individuals offering private tutoring without a permit are subject to fines and penalties under the applicable laws. No fine schedule has been published, so no amount appears on this page; a figure circulating online could not be verified against any official source. The permit's code of conduct also bars serving students affiliated with the tutor's own school, and Abu Dhabi's professional-ethics rules prohibit school staff from paid tutoring of students at their own school, so hiring your child's own teacher privately is not a route to take.

A business with premises and staff in Dubai is a different case again and needs a KHDA Educational Services Permit for a training institute. IB Gram holds no such permit, operates no office, centre or branch in the UAE, and delivers lessons online. Nothing on this site claims approval or accreditation from KHDA, the Ministry of Education, MoHRE, the IB, Cambridge or Pearson, because none is held.

There are providers ranking for these searches that sell finished internal assessments at a fixed price, and the risk is worth stating plainly because the price makes it look like a service. A student who submits purchased work faces their school's academic honesty process and, under IB rules, a malpractice finding that can cost the whole diploma. The provider keeps the fee. The student carries the consequence for years.

Legitimate support is narrower and more useful than the alternative pretends. A tutor teaches the criteria by letter and the marks attached to each. A tutor interrogates a research question until it is answerable in the word limit. A tutor questions method, data, sources and reasoning. A tutor reads a draft and replies with questions - why this comparison, what does the graph show that the table does not, which limitation would an examiner spot first. The student then decides, in their own words.

What a tutor must not do is supply text, restructure an argument on the student's behalf, or hand back a rewritten version to retype. The test is whether the student can defend every decision in the work under questioning, without notes. If they cannot, the help went too far whoever gave it and however it was described. That standard protects the student, which is the only reason it is worth holding to when a deadline is close.

The same boundary covers the Extended Essay, the Theory of Knowledge essay, the MYP Personal Project and IGCSE coursework. Ask a prospective tutor directly how they handle a draft, and listen for whether the answer involves giving the student a better version of it. A provider who describes that openly is describing a risk they are not the ones taking.