IB and IGCSE tutors for Mohammed Bin Rashid City families

The gap is easiest to see when it is laid out as a budget. Every assessed component in the IB and IGCSE systems has a class-time allocation and an independent-work requirement, and in several cases the independent requirement is the larger of the two. That is by design: both systems are explicitly testing a student's capacity to work alone. The failure mode is not that schools neglect this, but that students are expected to self-manage a workload that adults would find demanding.

The table below sets out where the budget runs out. Three rows deserve attention. The Internal Assessment line is the one families most often discover late, because the component looks like a project and behaves like an examination. The Extended Essay line matters because supervisor contact time is capped, and once the first draft is submitted the structured support largely ends. The exam-technique line is the one almost nobody plans for: students revise content, which feels productive, and never practise against a clock, which is what the paper tests.

Reading the table honestly also tells you where tutoring is not the answer. A student who has not covered the final two topics of a Higher Level syllabus because the class ran out of time needs those topics taught, which is a content job and takes a term. A student who knows the content and loses nine marks a paper on presentation needs four sessions. Those two situations attract the same parental worry and very different solutions.

Generic advice about working harder is useless at this level because the losses are specific and they are concentrated. The Cambridge science syllabuses sat across this district split the grade three ways: a multiple-choice paper worth thirty per cent, a structured theory paper worth fifty, and a practical or alternative-to-practical paper worth twenty. A student can be strong on content and still shed close to a grade through the twenty per cent nobody practised.

Mathematics loses marks differently. Cambridge 0580 at Extended tier is assessed across a non-calculator paper and a calculator paper, each carrying half the grade, and the most common loss is method marks forfeited by writing an answer with no working. Pearson 4MA1 at Higher tier runs two equally weighted papers, and the characteristic loss there is the last two questions left blank because the pacing was wrong. Neither problem is about mathematics.

The table names the component, what it tests and where the marks go. The practical consequence for a parent is that you can ask your child one question that is more diagnostic than any report: which paper did you lose the most marks on, and why. A student who cannot answer that has not been shown their own mark breakdown, which is the first thing a diagnostic session fixes.

One caution on syllabus detail. Cambridge and Pearson both revise syllabuses on a cycle, and paper structures that held for one cohort can change for the next. The weightings in this table reflect the structures sat by current candidates in this district, and the authoritative version for your child is the syllabus document for their examination year, which the school holds and Cambridge publishes. Check the code and the year together: a student entered for 0580 in one series and a sibling entered two years later may not be sitting the same paper combination at all, and past papers chosen from the wrong structure waste the practice.

No competitor page in this market names a single Internal Assessment criterion, which is strange, because the criteria are published, they are the actual basis of the mark, and most students have never read them properly. A Diploma student who knows what criterion D rewards will write a different evaluation section from one who does not, and the difference is typically two to four marks on a component worth a fifth of the grade.

The science Internal Assessment in Biology, Chemistry and Physics is a single Scientific Investigation marked out of twenty-four across four criteria carrying six marks each: research design, data analysis, conclusion and evaluation. The Mathematics Exploration in both Analysis and Approaches and Applications and Interpretation is marked out of twenty across five criteria: presentation, mathematical communication, personal engagement, reflection and use of mathematics, with the last carrying six marks on its own.

The table sets out what each criterion rewards and the specific way students lose marks on it. Treat the mark totals as a guide and confirm them against the current subject guide for your child's cohort, since the IB revises subject guides on a cycle and a figure correct for one cohort can be wrong for the next. Your school's IB coordinator holds the authoritative version, and asking for it is a reasonable request.

The reason this table changes behaviour is that criteria are not a marking formality; they are the instructions. A student who has read criterion D properly writes an evaluation section that names the specific weakness in their own method and proposes a realistic improvement, because that is what the criterion asks for. A student who has not read it writes a paragraph about human error and parallax, and loses three or four of the six marks available while believing the section is finished. The same applies to criterion B in the Mathematics Exploration, where undefined notation costs marks that no amount of additional mathematics recovers.

Three of the six best-ranking tutoring pages for Dubai searches publish no price at all, and the two that do quote in US dollars rather than the currency a Mohammed Bin Rashid City family actually transacts in. The bands below are market rates in AED taken from providers' own published pages and a 2026 Dubai tutoring cost survey, with the source named. They are market figures, not an IB Gram price list, and no row here is a quote.

The useful move is to multiply the band by the number of sessions a gap actually takes, because that is the number a parent is deciding about. A technique gap is four to six sessions. A tier or level decision is one or two. A board-switch bridge after a mid-year move is eight to twelve. A full subject catch-up is a term. Written out this way, the technique gap turns out to be the cheapest intervention available and the one most families postpone.

Two cautions on reading any of these numbers. An advertised hourly rate is not what you end up paying if there are assessment fees, materials or a minimum booking, so ask for the all-in figure and whether value added tax is included. And a low rate buying the wrong intervention is more expensive than a high rate buying the right one: twenty sessions of general subject review will not fix an evaluation criterion that four sessions of criterion work would.

Families here ask about in-home tutoring constantly, and it deserves a straight answer. It is a real service, the Dubai market rate for it runs roughly AED 180-500 an hour with travel priced in according to a 2026 cost survey and tutors' own published pages, and for younger children who need an adult physically present it has a genuine advantage. The question is what it costs you in specialist choice when the gap you are closing is this specific.

IB Gram does not offer home visits in Dubai or anywhere else in the UAE. Home visits are a service we run only in India. For Mohammed Bin Rashid City families we arrange one-to-one tuition delivered live over video, which means the tutor is selected from the full roster by subject, level and the specific component in question. The person who can teach criterion D on a science investigation, or the alternative-to-practical marking conventions, is a narrow specialism, and the subset of such people willing to drive to District One for a five o'clock start is narrower still.

The comparison table is organised around the gap rather than around convenience, because that is the decision in front of a parent on this page. The honest entry is the last row: a student who will not stay on task without someone in the room is harder to teach on a screen, and the format that works for them is shorter and more frequent with a parent within earshot, not a long block on a school night.

Equivalency is absent from most tutoring pages in this market, and one competitor publishes the wrong subject count, which is worse than silence. For a Mohammed Bin Rashid City family planning a UAE university route, the rules matter early, because they constrain subject choice in Year 10 rather than at the point of application. The figures below are from a Gulf Today report of the Ministry's own clarification, published in July 2026.

On the British track, students must show five accredited subjects in GCSE or IGCSE certificates with a grade of no less than E or grade 3, plus either one accredited subject at Advanced Level with a grade of no less than E, or two accredited subjects at Advanced Subsidiary Level at the same grade. Arabic and Islamic education are not included among the five required subjects, which is the point most often got wrong. On the American track, English proficiency requires a score of 5 in the IELTS academic test, 61 in the TOEFL iBT, or 450 in the reading and writing section of the SAT, and mathematics requires at least 450 in the SAT Math test.

For the IB Diploma this page publishes no points threshold, because the source used here states none and a figure that has not been read on the Ministry's own site should not sit on a page a family might plan around. IB Gram does not perform, submit or guarantee equivalency or attestation, and tutoring is not a requirement for any of it. What a tutor can legitimately do is make sure the subject and grade profile a student is on track for actually satisfies the rule, which is a one-session conversation in Year 10.

There is a market in Dubai for completed coursework, and at least one site ranking for these searches sells finished Internal Assessments for a four-figure AED sum. A Mohammed Bin Rashid City parent under pressure in February will see those offers, so this page states the position rather than leaving it implied. Submitting work that is not the student's own is malpractice under IB rules, the investigation falls on the student rather than the vendor, and a Diploma candidate found to have done it risks losing the award.

The practical argument is almost as strong as the rules argument. The skill an Internal Assessment tests is the skill the examination then tests again under time pressure. A student who did not design the investigation does not learn to design one, and the deficit resurfaces in May on a paper nobody can sit for them. Buying the component does not close the gap this page is about; it moves the gap to a place where it cannot be fixed.

The legitimate boundary is wide enough to be genuinely useful. A tutor can teach the criteria and their mark allocations, explain what a command term requires, help narrow a research question until it will produce usable data, teach the statistics or laboratory technique the investigation needs, read a draft the student has written and ask harder questions about it than the student asked themselves, and point out an unsupported claim. A tutor must not supply text, rewrite a passage into final form, or take over in any way that makes the submission not the student's own. IB Gram does not supply assessed work and declines requests framed that way.

Everything on this page reduces to one question a parent can answer cheaply: is this a content gap, a technique gap or a level problem. Those three have different costs, different timescales and different solutions, and the worry they generate feels identical from the outside. The evidence that distinguishes them is already in the house, in the form of a marked paper, a progress report or a returned coursework draft.

A technique gap looks like this: the student can explain the topic aloud, the marked paper shows marks lost on presentation, units, working or command terms, and the losses are spread evenly rather than concentrated in one topic. This is the cheapest gap to close, usually four to six sessions, and it is also the one that compounds if left, because the same losses recur on every paper for the rest of the course.

A content gap looks different: whole questions left blank, consistent losses in the same topics, and a student who cannot explain the material when asked. This needs the topics taught and takes a term. A level problem is the third case, where a student is two terms behind in a Higher Level subject and the honest advice is a conversation with the school about the level rather than more hours. A diagnostic session that reads the actual marked work tells you which of the three you are in, and it is worth doing before any commitment.