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Flag of DubaiDubaiONLINE YEAR 10 IGCSE TUITION FOR DUBAI FAMILIES

Year 10 IGCSE Tutor in Dubai

A Year 10 IGCSE tutor in Dubai is not an exam-season rescue. Year 10 is where the two-year grade is quietly built, and it is the only year with enough runway to fix a weak topic before it becomes a lost paper. Lessons are one-to-one over live video on Gulf Standard Time, so a Dubai Marina or Mirdif family books a 5pm slot without a drive. Every session leaves a marked artefact behind: a question-by-question script, a mark-scheme comparison, a running topic ledger.

  • Every session ends with a marked script and a dated topic ledger
  • Cambridge and Pearson Edexcel IGCSE specifications covered separately, never merged
  • Core versus Extended advised from marked evidence, not from a guess
  • One free 30-minute trial lesson per family, no card details taken

227

private schools in Dubai, KHDA count for 2024-25

387,441

private-school students in Dubai, 2024-25

2

Cambridge series UAE candidates sit: June and November

6

KHDA inspection bands, Outstanding to Very Weak

International schools near Dubai
  • Jumeirah College
  • Dubai English Speaking College
  • Dubai College
  • JESS Jumeirah
  • GEMS Wellington International School
  • Safa British School
  • Kings' School Al Barsha
  • Hartland International School
  • GEMS Founders School
  • Sunmarke School
  • Dubai British School Jumeirah Park
  • The Winchester School
  • Deira International School
  • GEMS Modern Academy
  • Dubai Scholars Private School
  • Our Own English High School
  • The Westminster School

School names are shown for local academic context only. IB Gram is an independent tutoring platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or representing any school listed here.

IB & IGCSE in Dubai

Year 10 is the year the evidence starts

Most Dubai families book IGCSE tuition in the second half of Year 11, about ten weeks before the June series. By then the useful choices have already been made. Tiers have been entered, coursework windows have closed, and a topic that was never understood in Year 10 has had eighteen months to compound. A Year 10 IGCSE tutor in Dubai does something structurally different: builds a record of what the student can actually do, early enough that the record still changes the outcome.

The record matters because the alternative is opinion. A school report arrives twice a year with a predicted grade and a paragraph of adjectives. A Year 10 parent-teacher meeting runs eight minutes across six subjects. Neither tells you whether your daughter loses marks in Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics 0580 because she cannot rearrange a formula or because she never reads the command term. Those are different problems with different fixes, and only a marked script separates them.

So the work in Year 10 is forensic before it is instructional. The first three sessions on any subject are diagnostic: a past paper sat under timed conditions, marked against the published mark scheme, then annotated question by question with the specification reference each lost mark belongs to. What comes out is a topic ledger — a list of specification points scored green, amber or red, with a date against each. Parents receive it after every session. It is dull to look at and it is the most useful document in the file.

The second thing Year 10 gives you is a real decision point. Cambridge IGCSE is tiered in most subjects: Core caps at grade C or 5, Extended runs to A* or 9. Schools in Dubai usually set the tier at the end of Year 10 or early in Year 11, and they set it from classwork. A student sitting on the Core-Extended boundary has a genuine choice, and the choice should be made from marked evidence across three or four papers rather than from how a term felt. Pearson Edexcel International GCSE is untiered in most subjects, which removes the decision and replaces it with a different one about paper selection.

Lessons are delivered online, one-to-one, over live video. IB Gram does not send tutors to homes anywhere in the UAE; home visits are a service offered only in India. What that buys a Dubai family is specialist matching rather than geographic matching: a student in Al Furjan working on Cambridge IGCSE Chemistry 0620 paper 4 gets a 0620 specialist, not whoever covers chemistry within a twenty-minute drive of Al Furjan. The marked-script workflow also works better on a shared screen than across a kitchen table, because both annotated copies are saved and searchable.

At a glance

  • Diagnostic phase: three timed papers per subject, marked to the published mark scheme
  • Topic ledger updated and dated after every session, sent to the parent the same day
  • Core versus Extended recommendation written from four papers of evidence
  • Separate tracks for Cambridge and Pearson Edexcel — codes, papers and tiering differ
  • Gulf Standard Time scheduling, with sessions moved after Iftar through Ramadan
IB programmes

Every IB programme stage, mapped to UAE school years

Year 10 sits inside a longer British-curriculum sequence, and the Year 10 decision affects what comes after it. These are the stages a Dubai family deals with either side of the IGCSE years, and what evidence each one needs.

KS3Ages 11-14 · Years 7-9

Key Stage 3, Years 7 to 9

The three years before IGCSE. No external exam, which is why gaps travel undetected into Year 10. The common arrivals in a Year 10 diagnostic are algebraic fractions, ratio as a multiplier, balancing equations and paragraph structure — all Key Stage 3 content assumed by the IGCSE specification rather than taught again inside it. A Year 9 student can be comfortable in class and still be missing the fluency Year 10 spends no time rebuilding.

Dubai schools compress Key Stage 3 differently. Several British-curriculum schools in the emirate start IGCSE content in Year 9, so a family transferring mid-year from a school that did not can arrive at a Year 10 class already a term behind on content nobody flags. A diagnostic paper on arrival settles it in ninety minutes.

Y10Ages 14-15 · Year 10

IGCSE Year 10

Year one of a two-year IGCSE course. Most subjects teach roughly sixty per cent of the specification this year, and the first full mock usually falls in the summer term. Year 10 is where the evidence file is worth building because every finding still has a year of lesson time behind it. It is also when tier decisions, option changes and a drop from nine subjects to eight are still practical rather than disruptive.

Dubai's academic year runs late August to late June or early July, with a long winter break in December and the Spring break aligned to Eid. That gives Year 10 three teaching blocks rather than the three even terms a UK timetable assumes, and the shortest block is the one in which most schools schedule the end-of-year mock.

Y11Ages 15-16 · Year 11

IGCSE Year 11

The examined year. Final entries are made months before the papers, mocks run in the winter block, and the June series closes the course. Tutoring in Year 11 is necessarily narrower: paper technique, timing, mark-scheme language and the three or four topics the ledger still shows red. A Year 10 file makes the Year 11 plan an hour of work instead of a month of discovery.

UAE candidates sit the June and November Cambridge series; the February/March series is offered to India only. Pearson Edexcel International GCSE runs May/June and November. Dubai schools overwhelmingly enter for the summer window, with November kept as the resit route for one or two subjects.

POST-16Ages 16-19 · Years 12-13

A Level or IB Diploma at 16

The IGCSE grade is the entry currency for both routes. A Level programmes in Dubai typically ask for grade 6 or 7 in the subject to be continued; IB Diploma Higher Level courses expect something similar and in maths often look specifically at the Extended paper 4 performance. The Year 10 ledger is the first honest signal about which post-16 route fits.

UAE Ministry of Education equivalency for the British track asks for five accredited IGCSE or GCSE subjects at no less than grade E or grade 3, with Arabic and Islamic Education excluded from that count, plus one A Level at E or two AS Levels at E. One competing site publishes a six-subject rule; the published requirement is five. Verify on the ministry's own pages before acting.

Subject coverage

IB and IGCSE subjects we tutor

Year 10 tuition is booked subject by subject, and the first question is always which specification the school actually teaches. The codes below are the ones that appear on a Dubai Year 10 timetable; the paper structure behind each is what a session plan is built from.

Mathematics (Cambridge 0580, Edexcel 4MA1)

Core and Extended · Edexcel Foundation and Higher

The tiered subject that matters most, because the tier caps the grade. Year 10 red flags cluster in algebraic manipulation, indices, ratio and compound measures. Cambridge 0580 Extended sets papers 2 and 4; Edexcel 4MA1 Higher sets papers 1H and 2H, each 2 hours and each 50 per cent.

Physics (Cambridge 0625, Edexcel 4PH1)

Core and Extended · Edexcel single tier

Marks are lost in Year 10 on unit conversion, formula rearrangement and the practical paper's variable-control language rather than on concepts. Cambridge 0625 sets an alternative-to-practical paper 6; Edexcel 4PH1 assesses practical skills inside the written papers instead, which changes how a Year 10 should revise.

Chemistry (Cambridge 0620, Edexcel 4CH1)

Core and Extended · Edexcel single tier

Year 10 usually covers moles, bonding, acids and bases and the start of organic chemistry. The mole calculation is the single highest-yield Year 10 fix: it carries into electrolysis, titration and energetics in Year 11, so a red flag here is never contained.

Biology (Cambridge 0610, Edexcel 4BI1)

Core and Extended · Edexcel single tier

Content-heavy and deceptively easy to feel confident in. The marks go on command-term discipline — describe versus explain, state versus suggest — and on the data-analysis questions where a correct biological idea earns nothing because the figure was never quoted.

English Language (Cambridge 0500 or 0990, Edexcel 4EA1)

First Language · ESL alternatives 0510 and 0511

Year 10 is where directed-writing technique is either built or left to instinct. The repeatable fix is structural: audience, form and purpose identified before the first sentence, then a paragraph plan. Cambridge 0500 paper 2 rewards that visibly; marking a Year 10 script against the published criteria shows why.

English Literature (Cambridge 0475, Edexcel 4ET1)

Set-text and unseen components

The Year 10 set text is examined eighteen months later, so quotation banks built now are the asset. Scripts lose marks for narrating the plot instead of analysing method; the ledger tracks that as a technique flag rather than a knowledge gap.

Economics (Cambridge 0455, Edexcel 4EC1)

Single tier

Diagram accuracy is the Year 10 priority: axes labelled, curves named, the shift drawn in the right direction and the new equilibrium marked. Most lost marks in a Year 10 economics script trace to a diagram that was almost right rather than to a weak argument.

Business Studies (Cambridge 0450, Edexcel 4BS1)

Single tier

Case-study application is the skill, and Year 10 students default to generic answers. Session work is mechanical: underline the context detail, then make every evaluative sentence refer back to it. The mark scheme pays for context, not for theory recall.

Computer Science (Cambridge 0478, Edexcel 4CP0)

Single tier

Two halves that fail for different reasons: the theory paper on data representation and networks, and the programming component where Year 10 students can read code but not write it from a specification. Trace tables are the Year 10 diagnostic that separates the two.

Arabic and the mandatory UAE subjects

Arabic as a first or additional language, Islamic Education, Social Studies

Dubai private schools must teach Arabic, Islamic Education and Social and Moral studies alongside the licensed curriculum, and KHDA requires separate classes for Arab and non-Arab students. Year 10 timetables therefore carry two or three subjects that do not appear in a UK equivalent, and they compete for the same revision hours.

How sessions run

Tutoring formats built around UAE school timetables

Year 10 has a year of runway, so the sensible pattern is low intensity held for a long time rather than a block of sessions in a panic. These are the three shapes that work, and the evidence each one produces.

Weekly one-to-one with a marked script

One 60-minute session a week per subject across the Year 10 academic year. The first three are diagnostic, then the pattern settles: twenty minutes reviewing the week's marked work, thirty teaching the red topics, ten setting the next timed task. The parent receives the annotated script and the updated ledger the same evening.

  • 60 minutes, live video, one subject per slot
  • Timed task set between sessions and marked before the next
  • Topic ledger dated and versioned, so movement is visible
  • Specification reference attached to every lost mark

Diagnostic block, then a written plan

Three sessions and two timed papers, ending in a written report rather than a subscription. It tells you which topics are red, whether Core or Extended fits the evidence, and how many weeks of work the gap represents. Some families take the report back to school and stop there, which is a legitimate outcome.

  • Three sessions, two marked papers, one written report
  • Core versus Extended recommendation with the marks behind it
  • Usable in a school meeting about sets or tiers
  • No continuing commitment attached

Holiday intensive on one weakness

Dubai's December and spring breaks are long, and a single topic can be rebuilt in a week of consecutive mornings in a way that a weekly session cannot. Mole calculations, algebraic fractions and directed writing all respond to four consecutive days followed by a timed check on the fifth.

  • Four or five consecutive 60-minute mornings
  • One named topic, chosen from the ledger's red list
  • Timed check on the final day, marked and compared to the baseline
  • Scheduled inside the Dubai school break, not across it
Verified tutors

IB and IGCSE tutors available to students in Dubai

The tutors below teach Year 10 IGCSE to Dubai students on live video. Each works to one named specification at a time, marks to the published mark scheme rather than to impression, and reports in writing after every session so a parent sees the evidence and not a summary.

Explore IB tutor options
RUHINA

RUHINA

Biology

IGCSE

4rating10 Yrs
Ajmanonline / home / hybridAll countries
Concept buildingDoubt clearing
Check availability
The full picture

What IB and IGCSE study actually looks like in Dubai

01

What a Year 10 IGCSE tutor in Dubai is actually for

  • Deliverable is a dated topic ledger, not a feeling about progress
  • Specification and tier confirmed before any teaching plan is written
  • Transfers and mid-course board changes audited rather than assumed
  • KHDA inspection bands describe schools, not individual topic gaps

A Year 10 IGCSE tutor in Dubai exists to turn a vague worry into a list. In Year 11 a tutor is mostly a technician: timing, mark-scheme language, the three topics left. In Year 10 the job is diagnostic, because the diagnosis still has time to be acted on. The deliverable is not confidence. It is a dated list of specification points the student cannot yet do, and a record of that list shrinking.

This matters in Dubai specifically because of how information reaches parents. Private schools in the emirate are inspected annually by KHDA against a six-band scale running from Outstanding to Very Weak, and a school's published band tells you something real about teaching quality across the whole institution. It tells you nothing about whether your son can balance an ionic equation. The granularity a parent needs sits below anything an inspection report or a termly grade card produces.

The second reason is movement. Dubai's private school population was 387,441 students across 227 schools in 2024-25, and the sector keeps growing: seven new private schools were approved for the 2026-27 intake, four British curriculum and three International Baccalaureate, adding 16,846 places. High mobility means Year 10 classes in Dubai routinely contain students who met the Key Stage 3 maths sequence in a different order, or who have switched exam board mid-course. Neither shows up as a problem until a paper is marked.

So the first month of Year 10 tutoring looks less like teaching and more like an audit. Which specification, which tier, which papers, which topics taught so far, which of those actually land under timed conditions. Only after that does a session plan mean anything. Families who skip the audit tend to buy a year of pleasant revision over topics the student was already fine at.

02

The Year 10 evidence file, term by term

An evidence file is only useful if it is collected on a schedule. Marking one paper in March tells you where a student was in March. The point of Year 10 is that the same measurement repeated four times shows direction, and direction is what a tier decision and a Year 11 plan both need. The table below is the collection schedule used across subjects, mapped to the Dubai academic year rather than a UK one.

Each checkpoint produces one artefact and informs one decision. The autumn baseline establishes where the student starts, using a paper from the published past series for the correct specification. The winter checkpoint, sat just after the December break, is the most diagnostic of the four because it measures retention rather than recent teaching. The spring checkpoint is the tier decision. The summer mock is the handover document into Year 11.

Parents sometimes ask whether four marked papers a year is enough. For the purpose of tracking, yes: more than that and you are testing instead of teaching. Between checkpoints the weekly session still sets and marks shorter timed tasks — one structured question, ten minutes, marked to the scheme — and those feed the ledger continuously. The four formal papers exist to be comparable to each other.

The file has a secondary use that families discover later. A student who needs a late set change, a tier change, or access arrangements has to make that case to the school, and a school responds very differently to four dated marked scripts than to a parental impression. The file is the argument.

YEAR 10 EVIDENCE CHECKPOINTS, MAPPED TO THE DUBAI ACADEMIC YEAR
CheckpointWhen in the Dubai yearEvidence producedDecision it informs
Baseline paperLate September, after four weeks of Year 10 teachingFull past paper, timed, marked to the published scheme, topic ledger version 1Whether tuition is needed at all, and in which subject first
Winter retention checkSecond week of January, after the long December breakPaper on autumn-term content only, plus a retention comparison against the baselineWhether the problem is understanding or forgetting — different fixes
Tier evidence paperLate February or early MarchCore and Extended paper attempted at the appropriate tier, both markedCore versus Extended entry, taken to the school with the marks attached
Summer mock reviewLate May or June, alongside the school's own mockSchool mock re-marked independently against the published schemeThe Year 11 topic plan and the number of weekly sessions to carry forward
Weekly micro-checksContinuous, between checkpointsOne structured question per week, ten minutes, marked within 24 hoursWhich topic the next session teaches
03

Core or Extended: the Year 10 decision that sets the ceiling

In most Cambridge IGCSE subjects the entry is tiered, and the tier caps the grade. A Core entry in Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics 0580 cannot produce better than a grade C on the letter scale or 5 on the numeric one, however well the papers are answered. Extended runs the full range to A* or 9 and sets harder papers. The decision is made by the school, usually from classwork, usually in the spring of Year 10 or the autumn of Year 11.

Pearson Edexcel International GCSE removes the tier in most subjects — one specification, one set of papers, the full grade range available to everyone — which is why some Dubai schools prefer it. Edexcel International GCSE Mathematics is the exception, running Foundation and Higher tiers through specification 4MA1. A family needs to know which of these two worlds their child's school lives in before the word 'tier' means anything.

The honest version of the tier conversation is that Core is the right answer for some students. A student who is reliably scoring in the low 30s on an Extended paper is likely to come out of Core with a secure grade C and out of Extended with a grade E, and a secure C counts toward the five subjects the UAE Ministry of Education equivalency route requires at no less than grade E or grade 3. The wrong outcome is not a Core entry. The wrong outcome is a tier chosen without marked evidence either way.

The table sets out what actually differs, because the usual summary — 'Extended is harder' — is not a decision tool. What a parent needs is the paper structure, the grade range, the consequence for post-16 options, and the amount of extra content Extended carries, which in 0580 is substantial rather than marginal.

CAMBRIDGE CORE AND EXTENDED AGAINST EDEXCEL, MATHEMATICS AS THE WORKED CASE
Compare acrossCambridge 0580 CoreCambridge 0580 ExtendedEdexcel 4MA1 Higher
Papers satPaper 1 and Paper 3Paper 2 and Paper 4Paper 1H and Paper 2H
Grade range availableC to G, or 5 to 1 on the numeric scaleA* to E, or 9 to 29 to 4, with 3 allowed below
Content beyond the shared coreNone — the shared syllabus onlyFunctions, calculus-adjacent gradients, harder trigonometry, vectors, set notationComparable to Extended, delivered in two equally weighted papers
Post-16 consequence in DubaiRarely sufficient for A Level Maths or IB HL entryKeeps A Level Maths and IB Maths AA HL openKeeps both open; Higher tier is the standard entry
Right-fit signal from Year 10 evidenceScoring below the mid-30s on Extended papers across two checkpointsScoring above the mid-40s on Extended papers with topic-specific rather than general lossAny student the school would have placed in Extended
04

Where Year 10 marks are actually lost

  • Command terms: one lesson to explain, six weeks to enforce, marks across every paper
  • Key Stage 3 arithmetic surfacing inside multi-step science questions
  • Data questions answered correctly but without quoting the figure
  • Timing untested until a full paper is sat under conditions

Marked scripts across Year 10 subjects produce a recurring list, and almost none of it is about intelligence. The largest single category is the command term. IGCSE mark schemes pay for specific verbs: state wants a fact with no justification, describe wants observable detail, explain wants a causal chain, suggest wants applied reasoning on unfamiliar material. A Year 10 who answers every question with a description loses marks across every science paper simultaneously, and the fix is a twenty-minute conversation plus six weeks of enforcement.

The second category is arithmetic carried from Key Stage 3. Negative indices, fraction manipulation and ratio treated as a difference rather than a multiplier appear in physics, chemistry and economics scripts as often as in maths. They are invisible in class because class questions are short. They surface on paper 4 because paper 4 questions are multi-step, and a slip in step one kills the remaining marks even where the method was right.

The third is the data question. Every science specification and both economics and business carry questions built on a table, a graph or a case paragraph, and the mark scheme requires the figure to be quoted. Students who understand the content and never quote the data lose two or three marks per paper, repeatedly, across two years. It is the cheapest fix in the file and nobody teaches it explicitly.

The fourth is timing, and in Year 10 it is usually untested. A student who has never sat a full paper under time does not know that they write for forty minutes and then rush. The baseline paper exposes it immediately, which is one of the arguments for sitting it in September rather than in the summer mock when the information is twelve months late.

05

What Year 10 IGCSE tuition costs in the Dubai market

Start with the monthly figure, because that is the number a family actually budgets. A single weekly 60-minute session held across a Dubai academic year is roughly 36 sessions. At the market's mid band for a qualified online subject tutor, that is a monthly commitment in the hundreds rather than the thousands; at the specialist exam-year band it roughly doubles. Published monthly estimates from the Bestimate rate survey put weekly one-hour tutoring at AED 240-600 for budget provision, AED 600-1,200 mid-market and AED 1,000-2,000 or more for specialist exam-year work.

Hourly rates in the Dubai market, read from providers' own published pages, run from the low double digits to well over AED 600. EdFlik publishes from AED 45-65 an hour and Tutopiya from AED 33-52 for budget online provision. Unitors publishes IGCSE tuition from AED 150 and IB from AED 200. TutorChase quotes AED 270 for specialist work and BartyED AED 650 for a premium named tutor. Monthly packages advertised in the market include AED 799 for eight online sessions and AED 1,599-1,799 for four two-hour in-home visits.

The in-home band is the interesting one for a Year 10 family, because it is where the travel premium sits. Bestimate's in-home range is AED 180-350 an hour and independent home tutors are quoted at AED 200-500. A good part of that difference buys travel time rather than teaching. Across a 36-session year the premium over an equivalent online rate is a four-figure sum, and what it purchases is a tutor who lives near enough to drive — which in a subject-specific Year 10 problem is the wrong selection criterion.

IB Gram does not publish a rate card on this page, because a Year 10 plan is priced by subject, frequency and whether marking is included rather than by a single hourly number. The free 30-minute trial lesson, one per family and with no card details taken, and the consultation that follows are where the figure gets quoted against an actual plan. The figures above are the market's, attributed to the providers who published them, and they are what a Dubai family should hold any quote against.

DUBAI TUTORING MARKET RATES IN AED, FROM PROVIDERS' OWN PUBLISHED PAGES, READ OCTOBER 2026
Market tierAED per hourWho publishes itWhat a Year 10 family gets for it
Budget online, often a university student45-150EdFlik from AED 45-65; Tutopiya from AED 33-52Homework supervision and content review; marking to the published scheme is rare at this tier
Qualified subject tutor, online150-300Unitors IGCSE from AED 150, IB from AED 200Specification-accurate teaching and marked scripts — the band most Year 10 plans sit in
In-home one-to-one, travel included180-500Bestimate survey 180-350; independent home tutors 200-500The same hour plus a commute premium, and a tutor pool limited to drivable distance
IGCSE and IB specialist200-450+TutorChase AED 270; Bestimate 200-450 and abovePaper-level specialism in one subject, usually booked for Year 11 rather than Year 10
Premium named or examiner-badged500-650+BartyED AED 650A named individual; examiner status should be evidenced before it is paid for
06

Reading the exam calendar backwards from a Year 10 start

A Year 10 family has roughly twenty months of runway, and the single most useful planning act is to count backwards from the series rather than forwards from today. UAE candidates sit the Cambridge June and November series; the February/March series is offered to India only, so a Dubai parent who reads a March date on a tutoring site is reading the wrong country's calendar. Pearson Edexcel International GCSE runs May/June and November.

Entries are the deadline that surprises families, because they fall months before the papers. Schools make the entry, including the tier choice, and once made a tier change is an administrative negotiation rather than a decision. That is the practical reason the tier evidence paper sits in the spring of Year 10: it needs to exist before the school's internal deadline, not after it.

Results timing is worth knowing in advance because it sets the retake clock. Pearson's published pattern is instructive: June 2026 results reached centres on 19 August 2026 and students on 20 August 2026, and November 2025 results reached students on 22 January 2026. The November 2026 final timetable ran from late October to 19 November 2026. A student who wants to improve one subject therefore has a clearly bounded window, and it opens the week results arrive.

One Cambridge administrative detail catches families who move country mid-course. Every exam centre is allocated to one of six administrative zones, and Cambridge states that it is essential to use the correct version of the timetable for the centre's zone; it cannot accept responsibility for candidates who miss an exam after using the wrong zone timetable. A family revising from a timetable downloaded for a different zone is revising to the wrong clock. Check the zone with the school's exams officer, and work from the live official timetable rather than from any date restated on a tutoring page.

COUNTING BACKWARDS FROM THE SUMMER SERIES, FROM A YEAR 10 START
MilestoneWhenWho sets itWhat should already be done
Year 10 baseline paperRoughly 20 months before the seriesYouSpecification and board confirmed with the school; topic ledger opened
Tier evidence paperRoughly 15 months beforeYou, ahead of the school's internal deadlineCore and Extended both attempted and marked, so the tier conversation has data
Final entries, including tierMonths before the papers — confirm the date with the exams officerThe school, to Cambridge or PearsonTier agreed, subject count settled, any access arrangements applied for
Year 11 mock windowWinter block of Year 11The schoolFull specification taught; ledger reduced to a short red list
Exam windowThe June series, or November for a resitCambridge or PearsonTimed papers under conditions; correct zone timetable confirmed
Results and the retake decisionAugust for the summer series; January for NovemberThe boardResit shortlist drawn from the ledger, not from disappointment
07

KHDA, the mandatory subjects, and the Year 10 timetable squeeze

Dubai's private schools are regulated by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, which is responsible for enhancing and overseeing the quality of private education in the emirate. The practical consequence for a Year 10 timetable is the mandatory-subject requirement: Arabic, Islamic Education and Social and Moral studies are taught in all Dubai private schools regardless of the licensed international curriculum, with KHDA's requirements due to be implemented by the start of the 2025-26 academic year, or April 2026 for schools whose year starts in April.

KHDA sets structure as well as content. Schools must organise separate classes for Arab and non-Arab students in Arabic as a first language, Islamic Education and Social Studies, and combined classes for the two groups are prohibited because the curriculum expectations and language of instruction differ. Instructional time is calculated on a 40-minute lesson unit, schools may vary lesson length provided total weekly time is met, and KHDA advises that no mandatory-subject lesson runs shorter than 25 minutes. Teachers of Islamic Education and Arabic must hold the relevant approval from KHDA to teach those subjects.

For a Year 10 student the arithmetic is simple and often unspoken: eight or nine IGCSE subjects plus two or three mandatory UAE subjects is more timetable than a UK Year 10 carries, and the mandatory subjects are assessed internally rather than externally. Revision hours get allocated by whichever deadline is nearest, which means IGCSE content loses to an Arabic assessment in the short run and the ledger shows it in the next checkpoint.

There is one hard constraint on how any tutor may handle the mandatory subjects. For those subjects, the use of any different or additional content without prior permission from the Ministry of Education is prohibited, so support has to work from the school's own materials rather than from an external scheme. IB Gram holds no approval, accreditation or licence from KHDA, the Ministry of Education or any UAE authority, and nothing on this page should be read as implying one; what it describes is the regulatory environment a Dubai family is already inside.

08

Academic honesty, and who is legally permitted to teach your Year 10

  • A tutor marks and explains; the student writes every word that is submitted
  • Past papers and mark schemes referenced and linked, never redistributed
  • MoHRE private tuition permit: free, valid two years, applied for in two working days
  • No published fine schedule exists — treat quoted amounts as unverified

Year 10 carries less assessed coursework than the Diploma years, but the boundary still matters and it is worth establishing before a bad habit forms. A tutor teaches, questions, marks and gives feedback on work the student produced. A tutor does not supply answers for submission, does not rewrite a draft into its final form, and does not produce assessed work on a student's behalf. The essay mills in this market sell exactly that; one UAE-facing site advertises completed Internal Assessments at AED 3,750. That is a malpractice trigger for the student, not a shortcut.

The second boundary is copyright. Syllabus documents, past papers, mark schemes and grade-boundary tables belong to Cambridge, Pearson and the IB. A tutor should reference them and link to the official source — cambridgeinternational.org, qualifications.pearson.com — rather than circulate reproductions. A provider handing out bundles of scanned mark schemes is telling you something about how it treats rules in general.

The third is the permit, and it is the one most Dubai families have never been told about. Private tutoring in the UAE is regulated: the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation private tuition work permit was introduced by Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023, is granted free of charge for two years, and covers teachers registered in government or private schools, government and private sector employees, unemployed individuals, school students aged 15 to 18, and university students. The application route is MoHRE's own service, 'Issuance of a New Work Permit - Private Tutor Licensing', with a stated two-working-day completion time through the MoHRE smart app, website and e-services system.

Individuals offering private tutoring without a MoHRE permit are subject to fines and penalties under the applicable laws. No fine schedule has been published, so any figure circulating online should be treated with suspicion. There is a related rule worth knowing in Abu Dhabi, reported in the press rather than read from the regulator: ADEK's professional-ethics rules bar private and charter school staff from paid private tutoring of students enrolled at their own school, and the MoHRE permit's code of conduct carries a comparable restriction. A parent asking a Year 10 teacher to tutor their own student privately is asking for something the teacher may not be permitted to provide.

Where we tutor

Areas we cover across Dubai

Online delivery means the postcode does not limit the tutor, but it does shape the timetable. A Year 10 session has to land after a school run and before homework collapses, and those two times are different across Dubai.

Dubai Marina and JLT

Apartment living, tight study space and a dense school-bus network. Year 10 students here often get home by 3.30pm but share a room, so a 4pm slot on headphones works better than a 7pm one in a family living room.

Arabian Ranches and Mudon

Villa communities with long bus routes. A Year 10 who boards at 6.45am and gets back at 4.15pm is not useful at 4.30pm; sessions here are usually booked at 6pm, with the marked script sent the same night for a morning read.

Mirdif and Al Warqa

Heavy mix of British and Indian curriculum schools, and a high rate of mid-year transfers between them. Diagnostic papers matter more here because a Year 10 arriving from a CBSE Class 9 has met the maths content in a different order.

Al Barsha and Dubai Hills Estate

Several large British-curriculum schools inside a short radius, which means Year 10 cohorts of 200 and sets that move. A student bumped from the top set in February has a tier conversation pending, and the ledger is what makes it evidence-based.

Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim

Older, established schools with long-running IGCSE cohorts and fixed set texts. Quotation work for English Literature can start in Year 10 because the text list rarely changes year to year in these schools.

Dubai Silicon Oasis and Academic City

Short commutes and a cluster of schools on the same campus roads, so a 4.30pm start is realistic. Families here often run two children on the same evening; the second session is scheduled back-to-back rather than on a different day.

Al Furjan and Discovery Gardens

A growing Year 10 population in newer schools with smaller cohorts, which often means one teacher covers both Core and Extended maths. External marked evidence is more useful where the school has no parallel set to benchmark against.

School ecosystem

IB and Cambridge school communities we support in Dubai

Central and coastal Dubai

Long-established British-curriculum schools running Cambridge or Edexcel IGCSE at 16 before splitting into A Level or IB Diploma. Year 10 cohorts here are large enough to be setted, and set movement in the spring term is the usual trigger for a parent to look for outside marking.

  • Jumeirah College
  • Dubai English Speaking College
  • Dubai College
  • JESS Jumeirah
  • GEMS Wellington International School
  • Safa British School

New Dubai and the southern communities

Newer campuses with growing secondary phases, several only now running their third or fourth Year 11 cohort. Smaller sets mean more flexibility on tier but less internal benchmark data, which is exactly where an externally marked paper earns its place.

  • Kings' School Al Barsha
  • Hartland International School
  • GEMS Founders School
  • Sunmarke School
  • Dubai British School Jumeirah Park
  • The Winchester School

Deira and the eastern corridor

A dense mix of British and Indian curriculum provision with substantial mid-year movement between them. Transfers in Year 10 are common here, and a transferring student's first need is a specification map rather than tuition.

  • Deira International School
  • GEMS Modern Academy
  • Dubai Scholars Private School
  • Our Own English High School
  • The Westminster School

Schools are named to describe the Dubai Year 10 landscape a family is actually navigating. IB Gram has no affiliation with, endorsement from, or commercial relationship with any school listed.

How matching works

From first enquiry to a tutor who fits

  1. 01

    Tell us the specification, not just the subject

    The useful opening message names the board and code — Cambridge 0580 or Edexcel 4MA1 — the school, the current set and what the last report said. If you do not know the code, the school's exams officer does, and it takes one email. Matching without it means guessing at paper structure, which is how a wrong tutor gets booked.

  2. 02

    Free 30-minute trial, one per family

    A live video session with the matched tutor, no card details taken and no obligation afterwards. It is diagnostic rather than a sample lesson: a short structured question sat under time, marked live, so you and the student both see the marking standard before any money is discussed.

  3. 03

    Baseline paper and ledger version one

    A full past paper for the correct specification, sat under timed conditions and marked to the published scheme. The output is the first topic ledger: specification points scored green, amber or red, dated. This is the document the whole year is measured against, so it is worth sitting properly.

  4. 04

    Weekly sessions with written reports

    One 60-minute slot per subject per week on Gulf Standard Time, with a timed task between sessions and a marked script after each. Reports go to the parent the same evening and name the specification reference behind every lost mark, so progress is readable without a meeting.

  5. 05

    Tier review in the spring term

    Core and Extended papers both attempted and marked, and a written recommendation with the marks attached. You take it to the school's tier conversation as evidence. If the recommendation is Core, it says so plainly, because a secure grade C is a better outcome than an optimistic entry and a grade E.

  6. 06

    Handover into Year 11

    The summer mock is re-marked independently and the ledger is reduced to a short red list that becomes the Year 11 plan. Some families carry on at the same frequency, some drop to fortnightly, some stop. The plan says which of those the evidence supports.

Why families choose us

What UAE parents tell us matters most

The marked script is the product

Sessions end with an annotated paper and a dated ledger rather than a verbal summary. It means a parent who was not in the room can see what happened, and it means progress is a comparison between two documents instead of an opinion about a term.

Specification-level matching, not postcode matching

Because lessons run on live video, a Year 10 doing Cambridge 0620 gets a 0620 specialist rather than the nearest available chemistry tutor. In a tiered subject with board-specific paper structures, that distinction is the difference between relevant teaching and general revision.

The tier recommendation is written down

Core versus Extended is the single highest-consequence Year 10 decision, and it is made in writing from four papers of evidence. Where the evidence points to Core, the recommendation says Core. A page that only ever recommends the harder tier is selling optimism.

Timed to the Dubai week, including Ramadan

Sessions run on Gulf Standard Time, scheduled around school-bus arrival rather than a European evening, and moved to post-Iftar slots through Ramadan. Holiday intensives are placed inside Dubai's December and spring breaks rather than across them.

Rules stated, including the awkward ones

The page names the MoHRE permit requirement, the prohibition on producing assessed work, the KHDA restriction on additional content in mandatory subjects, and the fact that IB Gram holds no regulator approval. A provider that hides those is hiding the parts a parent most needs.

Market rates published with their sources

Every AED figure on this page is attributed to the provider or survey that published it, with the month it was read. Three of the six pages ranking for Dubai tutoring queries publish no price at all, and two quote in US dollars. A parent cannot judge a quote without a benchmark.

Student and parent reviews

What students and parents say about working with IB Gram

Practical feedback on tutor fit, revision structure and communication from IB and IGCSE families we have taught.

“Every session has been a positive learning experience. The students are progressing well, becoming more confident, and showing a genuine interest in learning.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“The students have developed a much better understanding of the concepts through regular practice and guidance. Their confidence and participation have improved noticeably.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“Watching the students progress from one session to the next has been very satisfying. They are learning with confidence and showing genuine interest.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“The sessions provide a good balance of explanation, practice, and feedback. Students are steadily building their skills and confidence.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“The students are showing a positive attitude toward learning and are becoming more independent with each session. The progress has been very encouraging.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“Personalized support and regular practice have helped the students make excellent progress. Their confidence has improved significantly over time.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“The learning process has been smooth and engaging. Students are asking better questions, understanding concepts more clearly, and improving consistently.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“It is rewarding to see students become more confident in their abilities. The sessions are productive, engaging, and focused on meaningful learning”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“The students are making steady progress and developing a stronger foundation. Consistent practice and individual attention have helped a lot.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“I have seen noticeable improvement in the students' understanding and participation. Their enthusiasm for learning is truly encouraging.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“A supportive learning environment makes a big difference. The students are responding well to personalized guidance and regular feedback.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“The overall learning journey has been very positive. Students are becoming more confident, curious, and comfortable with new concepts.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“The students have shown great progress with regular practice and guidance. It is wonderful to see their confidence grow with every session.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“It has been a rewarding experience working with the students. Their confidence and understanding have improved significantly through consistent guidance, practice, and personalized attention.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“The learning experience has been wonderful. The students are engaged, confident, and showing consistent improvement. The teaching approach is supportive, clear, and focused on building strong fundamentals.”

Priya Vivek

Gurugram

“We were stuck on Math AA HL paper 3 sample questions. The matched tutor walked through the syllabus depth and IA strategy, and our daughter's confidence shifted in three weeks.”

Priya R.

Gurugram

“Physics HL felt scary before mocks. The tutor mapped my weak topics and gave a realistic command-term plan. Mocks went up by two grade boundaries.”

Aarav K.

DLF Phase 5

“We wanted Economics HL support that matched the actual paper command terms. IB Gram matched us within a day with a specialist who understood our school's IA timeline.”

Sneha M.

Sector 57

“Cambridge IGCSE Chemistry past-paper practice made the difference. The tutor was honest about pace and progress, and the lesson notes were structured.”

Reema S.

Sushant Lok

Questions parents ask

IB and IGCSE tutoring in Dubai: your questions answered

Is Year 10 too early to start IGCSE tutoring in Dubai?+

Year 10 is the earliest point at which tutoring can change the tier decision, which makes it the most consequential year rather than the premature one. By the second half of Year 11 the entry is made, the coursework windows have closed and a tutor is limited to paper technique on the content already taught. A Year 10 start buys roughly twenty months of runway and four comparable marked checkpoints. The honest caveat is intensity: a Year 10 does not need three sessions a week. One weekly session per weak subject, held consistently and documented, outperforms a block of intensive work bought in the spring of Year 11.

How do I find out which IGCSE specification my child's Dubai school actually teaches?+

Ask the school's exams officer for the board and the syllabus code, in writing. The subject name is not enough: Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics 0580 and Pearson Edexcel International GCSE Mathematics 4MA1 differ in tiering, paper count and paper length, and a tutor planning for the wrong one wastes a term. Some Dubai schools enter different subjects with different boards in the same cohort, so the answer can be mixed. Teachers often do not have the codes to hand; the exams officer always does, because entries are made from them. One email settles it and the codes should go on the first line of any tutoring enquiry.

What does a Year 10 topic ledger actually look like?+

It is a table, one row per specification point taught so far, with a red, amber or green status and the date it was last tested. A maths ledger in January might show algebraic fractions red since September, indices amber after one re-test, and Pythagoras green since October. Each red row links to the question on the marked script where the mark was lost. That is all. It is deliberately unglamorous, because its only job is to be comparable to last month's version and to tell the next session what to teach. Parents receive the current version the same evening as each session.

Should my Year 10 be entered for Cambridge Core or Extended maths?+

Decide it from marked papers at both tiers, not from a predicted grade. The practical rule from marked evidence: a student scoring below the mid-30s on Extended papers across two separate checkpoints is usually better served by Core, where a secure grade C is achievable; a student above the mid-40s with loss concentrated in named topics rather than spread across the paper should stay on Extended. The consequence to weigh is post-16. Core rarely satisfies entry to A Level Mathematics or IB Maths Analysis and Approaches at Higher Level, so a Core entry should be a considered choice about the next two years, not a retreat.

Do online lessons work for a 14-year-old, or do they need someone in the room?+

The honest answer is that it depends on the task and on supervision. Marking, paper review, worked examples and screen-shared annotation work at least as well on video as across a table, because both annotated copies are saved and can be re-read. What video does not provide is a presence stopping a distracted 14-year-old opening another tab. The practical fix is structural: sessions run in a shared room rather than a bedroom, the timed task is sat with the camera on, and the written report after each session makes disengagement visible within a week rather than a term.

How much should a Dubai family budget monthly for one Year 10 subject?+

Work from the market's published monthly figures rather than an hourly rate, because the hourly number hides frequency. The Bestimate survey puts weekly one-hour tutoring at AED 240-600 a month for budget provision, AED 600-1,200 for mid-market and AED 1,000-2,000 or more for specialist exam-year work. Advertised packages in the Dubai market include AED 799 a month for eight online sessions. One weekly session across a Dubai academic year is roughly 36 sessions. Those are market figures, attributed to the providers who published them and read in October 2026; IB Gram quotes against a specific plan rather than a rate card.

Why does in-home tutoring cost more per hour in Dubai than online?+

Most of the gap is travel. Bestimate's in-home band is AED 180-350 an hour against a mid-market online band of AED 150-300, and independent home tutors are quoted at AED 200-500. The difference pays for a commute across Sheikh Zayed Road at 5pm rather than for better teaching. The second cost is less visible: an in-home tutor has to live within driving distance, so the selection pool shrinks to geography. IB Gram does not offer home visits in Dubai or anywhere else in the UAE — home visits are an India-only service — and lessons here run one-to-one on live video instead.

Does a Year 10 need tutoring in every subject, or only the weak ones?+

Only the ones the evidence names, and usually no more than two at a time. Nine IGCSE subjects plus the mandatory UAE subjects already fill a Dubai Year 10 week, and adding four tutored subjects produces compliance rather than learning. The sensible sequence is to run baseline papers across the subjects of concern, rank them by distance from the target grade, and start with the single subject whose gap is widest and whose content compounds most. Maths and the sciences compound hardest, because an unresolved mole calculation or algebraic weakness reappears in Year 11 topics rather than staying where it was.

Which IGCSE command terms does a Dubai Year 10 lose the most marks on?+

Command terms are the verbs IGCSE mark schemes are written around, and each buys something different. State wants a fact with no justification. Describe wants observable detail. Explain wants a causal chain. Suggest wants applied reasoning on unfamiliar material. Compare wants both sides in the same sentence. A student who answers everything as a description loses marks simultaneously across every science and humanities paper, which looks like a subject problem and is actually one habit. It takes twenty minutes to explain and about six weeks of enforced marking to fix, and it is the highest-yield correction available in Year 10.

Does a Year 10 tutor working in Dubai need a MoHRE tuition permit?+

Yes. The UAE regulates private tutoring through a Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation private tuition work permit, introduced by Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023. It is granted free of charge for two years, and eligible applicants include teachers registered in government or private schools, government and private sector employees, unemployed individuals, school students aged 15 to 18, and university students. Applications go through MoHRE's own service, 'Issuance of a New Work Permit - Private Tutor Licensing', with a stated two-working-day completion time. Individuals tutoring without a permit are subject to fines and penalties under the applicable laws; no fine schedule has been published, so quoted amounts are unverified.

Can my child's own schoolteacher tutor them privately in Dubai?+

Treat it as a question for the school rather than an arrangement to make quietly. Abu Dhabi's ADEK professional-ethics rules, as reported in the press, bar private and charter school staff from paid private tutoring of students enrolled at their own school, and the MoHRE private tuition permit's code of conduct carries a comparable restriction on serving students affiliated with the tutor's own school. Any teacher tutoring outside school hours also needs the permit. The information is press-reported rather than read from the regulator's own current policy document, so confirm it with the school before relying on it either way.

How many IGCSE passes does the UAE equivalency route count for a Year 10 in Dubai?+

The published British-track requirement is five accredited subjects in GCSE or IGCSE certificates at no less than grade E or grade 3, with Arabic and Islamic Education not included among those five, plus either one accredited subject at Advanced Level at grade E or better or two at Advanced Subsidiary Level at the same grade. One competing UAE tutoring site states six IGCSE subjects are required; the published rule is five. Equivalency is a Ministry of Education process that IB Gram neither performs nor guarantees, and tutoring is not a requirement for it. Verify the current wording on the ministry's own pages before acting on it.

When are IGCSE exams held for students in Dubai?+

Cambridge International runs a June series and a November series, and UAE candidates sit those two; the February/March series is offered to India only, so a March date on a tutoring site is the wrong country's calendar. Pearson Edexcel International GCSE runs May/June and November. One administrative detail matters more than the dates: every Cambridge centre is allocated to one of six administrative zones, and Cambridge states it is essential to use the correct timetable version for the centre's zone and that it cannot accept responsibility for candidates who miss an exam after using the wrong one. Confirm the zone with the exams officer.

What happens if no tutor is available for the specification we need?+

You get told, with the alternative stated plainly. Niche Year 10 combinations do run short — Edexcel-specific computer science, Arabic as a first language at IGCSE level, a minority second language — and the options are a wait with a date attached, a tutor outside the UAE delivering on the same live video platform and on Gulf Standard Time, or a referral away. All three are better than a general subject tutor placed into a specification they have not taught. No competitor page found in this market discloses a coverage limit at all, which is a reason to ask the question of anyone quoting.

Can sessions move during Ramadan and the Dubai school breaks?+

Yes, and they should. Through Ramadan school days shorten and concentration shifts, so sessions move to post-Iftar slots and the weekly timed task is usually dropped to a single structured question. Dubai's December break and the spring break aligned to Eid are long enough to run a holiday intensive: four or five consecutive 60-minute mornings on one named red topic, with a timed check on the final day compared against the baseline. Scheduling is agreed inside the break rather than across its start, because a session booked on the first morning of a family trip is a session nobody attends.

Reading

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Keep exploring

More IB and IGCSE tutoring pages for Dubai

Every page below covers a different question Dubai families ask about IB and IGCSE support, with its own syllabus detail, costs and tutor availability.

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Related pages

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Start with one marked paper

The cheapest useful step for a Year 10 family in Dubai is not a tutoring package. It is one past paper, for the correct specification, sat under timed conditions and marked against the published scheme. That single document tells you whether there is a problem, whether it is understanding or technique, and roughly how many weeks of work the gap represents. Send the board, the syllabus code and the school, take the free 30-minute trial lesson, and read the first topic ledger before committing to anything. If the ledger comes back mostly green, the right recommendation is to spend the money elsewhere, and that is what you will be told.

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