IB DP Home Tutor in the UAE

A Diploma-level tutoring hour in the UAE is advertised anywhere between AED 33 and AED 650, and the spread is not noise. Each band is a different product with a different thing missing from it. The table below is built only from figures the providers themselves publish, with the month they were collected, because the single most useful thing a page in this market can do is show its sources: of the ranking pages reviewed in October 2026, three published no price at all and the two that did quoted US dollars.

Read the fourth column first. The bottom band is cheap because it is a generalist, and a generalist does not know that a Chemistry Internal Assessment capped by a thin data set is already in trouble, or that a Mathematics Paper 1 answer gets no credit for calculator work. The visiting band is dear because somebody is driving, and that cost sits inside the hour whether or not it appears on the invoice. The top band may well be worth it, but a parent should ask for evidence of any claimed examining status rather than accept it as a reason for the rate.

None of these are IB Gram prices. We do not publish a rate card on a landing page, for a reason that becomes obvious once you have read the next two sections: a fortnightly Arabic B conversation hour and a weekly Mathematics Analysis and Approaches Higher Level slot through DP2 are different products, and a single headline number would mislead on both. What we do instead is a free trial lesson and a written plan that states the hours, what each one targets and what it will cost before anything is agreed.

One practical note on comparing quotes. Always normalise to a teaching hour. Monthly packages in this market are advertised at around AED 799 for eight online sessions and AED 1,599 to AED 1,799 for four two-hour visits, and dividing those out moves providers around the table considerably. Ask whether the figure is per hour or per lesson, whether a 50-minute lesson is billed as an hour, and whether VAT treatment has been stated; our own quoted figures state whether VAT is included, and no page should assert the tax treatment of tuition without a Federal Tax Authority citation.

A full Diploma is nine assessed commitments: six subjects and three core components. Almost no UAE family funds tutoring in all nine, and the ones who try usually spend twice as much for a worse result, because nine simultaneous tutors produce nine sets of homework on top of the school's. The useful question is not which subject is hardest. It is which marks are currently recoverable, and at what hourly cost.

Run the audit on evidence, not anxiety. The three documents that answer it are the most recent school report, the first mock paper with the markscheme beside it, and the Internal Assessment deadline list from the coordinator. A subject where the mock lost marks on unfinished questions needs three technique hours. A subject where the mock lost marks on the first page needs a term of weekly teaching. Those two diagnoses differ by several thousand dirhams, and they look identical on a report card that says grade 4.

The table applies that logic slot by slot. Two of its conclusions surprise parents. The first is that the Group 6 or second elective slot is usually the one to leave alone: it is chosen last, revised last, and rarely the cheapest place to find marks. The second is that the core deserves scheduled money even when every subject grade looks healthy, because an Extended Essay question that is too wide costs marks that no amount of subject teaching recovers.

A free trial lesson is how the audit gets done properly. Spend it on a real marked script rather than an introduction, and ask the tutor to say which of the three diagnoses applies and how many hours it implies. If the answer is a weekly slot in every subject regardless of what the script shows, that is a sales answer, and it is a reliable signal to get a second opinion before any deposit is paid.

The HL and SL labels are usually explained as difficulty. For a family doing arithmetic, they are better understood as a quantity of teaching. Higher Level carries more taught hours across the two years, additional option or extension material, and in several subjects an extra written paper. That translates almost directly into support hours: in practice an HL subject absorbs roughly double the paid hours the same subject needs at Standard Level, and the per-hour rate is higher too, because HL option specialists are the scarcest category in the UAE market.

This is why the subject-selection conversation in MYP 5 or IGCSE Year 11 belongs in a document about cost. Three Higher Levels chosen to keep every university option open, in a student whose prior attainment supports two, is the most expensive decision available to a UAE Diploma family. It shows up eighteen months later as three weekly slots at AED 200 to AED 300 an hour. Equally, dropping an HL to save money can close a degree course: medicine, engineering and most quantitative programmes expect specific Higher Levels, and that should be checked against each named university's own published requirements before anything is changed.

The comparison table reads across seven dimensions rather than restating weightings. Where exact paper counts and weightings matter for your child's subjects, take them from the current subject guide through the school's IB coordinator. We do not reproduce or supply syllabus documents, past papers, markschemes or grade boundary tables: they are the boards' copyright, and the honest route is to reference them and work from the material your child's school already holds.

One more practical point. The Internal Assessment is the same task at both levels in most subjects, and the supervision hours are therefore identical. What differs is the redraft cycle, which tends to run longer at Higher Level because the criteria are read more demandingly. A family budgeting a component block should plan the same four to five hours either way and expect the HL block to spread over a few more weeks.

Most tutoring in this market is sold by the month, because a subscription is easier to bill. The Diploma, though, is assessed in components with deadlines, and a family that buys by component rather than by month usually spends less and gets more. An Internal Assessment is a finite job: a defensible research question, a walk through the criteria, feedback on the student's own drafts, a final check against the brief. Four to five hours spread over six weeks covers it. Billed as a monthly subscription from October to March, the same job costs several times as much.

The table below costs each component block at published UAE market rates, in the AED 200 to AED 300 range where a qualified subject teacher sits. The point of putting money against components is to let a family sequence the spend: an Internal Assessment block in DP1, an Extended Essay block across the DP1 and DP2 boundary, a Theory of Knowledge block once the title is chosen, and a technique block in the final term. Four blocks across two years is a very different cash-flow shape from eighteen months of weekly lessons in three subjects.

Two blocks deserve to be bought early at almost any price. The first is the Mathematics rebuild: twelve hours in DP1 closing algebra and functions gaps inherited from IGCSE or MYP, before Paper 1 practice begins. The second is the Extended Essay question. Three hours spent narrowing a question in DP1 prevents the single most common collapse in the core, which is a student in DP2 holding 4,000 words that answer a question nobody can research in that space.

The one component nobody should buy is coursework production. The hours in this table buy teaching, questioning and feedback on the student's own work. If a provider offers to deliver a finished Internal Assessment or Extended Essay, that is academic malpractice under IB rules, it puts the Diploma itself at risk, and one such operator in this market advertises completed Internal Assessments at AED 3,750. It is the clearest example in the whole SERP of a price that is not value.

Compare the two formats as they actually land in a Diploma week rather than as hourly rates. A DP2 student in the UAE finishes school in the middle of the afternoon, has CAS commitments, has Internal Assessment deadlines in several subjects at once, and in exam term is sitting mocks. The constraint is not money alone. It is which slots exist at all.

A visiting lesson at 6pm in Dubai or Abu Dhabi means a tutor leaving home around 5pm, which fixes the slot for everybody and makes a late change expensive: in this market a cancelled visit is usually still charged, because the travel was already committed. A scheduled video lesson at 6pm starts at 6pm, and if a CAS activity overruns it can move to 9pm the same evening without anyone absorbing a wasted journey. Over an eighteen-month Diploma, that flexibility is worth more than a discount on the rate.

The subject argument is stronger still. A search for a visiting tutor is a search inside a radius, and a radius is a poor filter for Diploma teaching. Mathematics Analysis and Approaches at Higher Level, Physics HL option material, Computer Science, History source technique and Arabic B are each specialist jobs; the chance that the right specialist for your child's subject also lives twenty minutes away in Al Ain, Fujairah or Umm Al Quwain is low. Online delivery replaces that filter with the subject itself.

To be plain about what IB Gram sells: every UAE lesson is one-to-one over live video, timetabled in Gulf Standard Time, with the student's own script, criteria sheet and mark breakdown on a shared screen. We do not send tutors to addresses in the UAE; the in-home service is one we run only in India. The table prices the UAE alternatives honestly, including the two that cost nothing and the one that costs a journey on a school night.

Rate tables tell a parent what an hour costs. They do not answer the question actually being asked, which is what a year of this will come to. The four shapes below are the enquiry patterns that recur across the emirates, costed at the published AED 200 to AED 300 band for a qualified subject teacher. None is a quotation; each is arithmetic a family can repeat with their own numbers.

Notice what the last column has in common. Every one of these families chose not to buy something. The DP1 Dubai family funded one subject and left five alone. The Abu Dhabi family waited for the mock evidence before committing a dirham, which cost them nothing and saved a term of weekly fees. The Sharjah family split a modest termly budget across two children instead of doubling a weekly slot. Restraint, not discount-hunting, is what keeps a Diploma budget sane.

The retake row is the one families never see coming. After results, a November session re-sit is a six-week intensive at full exam-term demand, plus the entry costs the examination centre charges a candidate. What carries forward from the first attempt, and what must be submitted again, is a question for the school's IB coordinator before any tutoring is booked, because the answer changes the hours considerably.

If you want to run this for your own situation, the inputs are short: which subjects, which levels, how many weeks until the relevant deadline, and which of the three jobs the marked evidence points at. Bring those four things to a free trial lesson and the plan that comes back should state the hours, the target and the cost before you commit to anything.

Every dirham spent on Diploma support is exposed to one risk that dwarfs the others. If a tutor crosses the line into producing assessed work, the student faces an academic-misconduct investigation, and the whole two years is at stake. That makes the honesty boundary a value question as much as a moral one: the money only works if what it buys is admissible.

The line itself is not vague. A tutor may teach the subject, explain the assessment criteria in the student's own words, interrogate a research question, model what a strong response looks like on a different task, and give written feedback on a draft the student wrote. A tutor may not choose the question, supply the data, restructure the argument on the student's behalf, or put sentences into a piece of assessed work. Schools ask students to declare authenticity, supervisors record their interactions, and teachers who have taught a student for two years recognise a voice that is not theirs.

This market contains providers who ignore that. One advertises completed Internal Assessments at AED 3,750. Treat an offer to deliver a finished Internal Assessment, Extended Essay or Theory of Knowledge essay as a reason to end the conversation, not as a premium service: what is on sale is a malpractice finding with a price tag. The same applies to any provider claiming access to unreleased papers, markschemes or grade boundaries.

There is a second honesty line worth checking before you pay. We do not reproduce or distribute IB, Cambridge or Pearson syllabus documents, past papers, markschemes or subject guides; they are the boards' copyright. Work is done from material your child's school already holds, with official sources cited and linked. A provider handing out large packs of board material should prompt a question about where it came from.

A Diploma budget built only around six subjects and the core misses something every UAE family is already paying for in time. Private schools in the Emirates teach Arabic, Islamic Education and social or moral studies alongside the licensed international curriculum, because the federal rule requires it and each emirate's regulator enforces it. KHDA's mandatory-subjects guidance for Dubai sets out who takes what, in which language, and how classes must be organised, and it required implementation by the start of the 2025-26 academic year.

Two details in that guidance matter for anyone planning tutoring. Classes must be separated by group: for Arabic as a first language, Islamic Education and Social Studies, schools must run separate classes for Arabs and non-Arabs, and combined classes 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 the weekly total is met, and the guidance advises that no mandatory-subject lesson runs shorter than 25 minutes.

The third detail is the one that changes what a tutor can sell you. For these subjects, using different or additional content without prior permission from the Ministry of Education is prohibited, and schools must ensure teachers of Islamic Education and Arabic hold the appropriate KHDA approval to teach them. A provider offering a bespoke Arabic or Islamic Education programme for a Dubai school pupil is offering something the school itself is not permitted to adopt freely. Revision against the school's own material is the honest shape of help here.

The practical consequence for a budget is simple. Confirm what the school is already obliged to deliver and to how much weekly time before paying anyone for it. Families regularly fund an Arabic tutor when the report was flagging Arabic B inside the Diploma, which is a different subject with different assessment, or pay for Islamic Education support that the school must provide to KHDA's own allocation. Checking first is free and frequently saves a line item.

Private tutoring in the UAE is permitted and regulated, and the regulation is checkable. Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023 introduced the private tuition work permit, administered by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation. The permit is granted free of charge for two years, and the eligible categories are broad: teachers registered in government or private schools, government and private-sector employees, unemployed residents, university students, and school students aged 15 to 18. MoHRE's own service page, Issuance of a New Work Permit - Private Tutor Licensing, lists no fee and a two-working-day completion time, applied for through its app, website and e-services.

Two things follow for a family comparing quotes. An individual tutoring privately in the UAE needs that permit, and anyone offering lessons without one is subject to fines and penalties under the applicable laws; the ministry has not published a schedule of amounts, so treat any specific figure circulating online with scepticism. Equally, because the permit is free, a tutor adding a licensing or permit fee to your invoice is charging for something that costs them nothing.

The second check concerns who may teach your child. In Abu Dhabi, ADEK's professional-ethics rules for private and charter school staff prohibit paid private tutoring of pupils enrolled at the teacher's own school, and the permit's code of conduct also bars serving students affiliated with the holder's own school. Any offer of your child's own class teacher, privately, should therefore be declined. It is worth confirming the current wording against ADEK's own published policy, since the detail here has been press-reported rather than quoted from the source document.

A third check is about the organisation rather than the individual. A tutoring business with premises and staff in Dubai needs a KHDA Educational Services Permit as a training institute, with initial approval first, a maximum of six months to complete the permit and licence steps, and renewal requested at least 30 days before expiry. IB Gram holds no such permit and makes no claim to one: we are an independent online tutor-matching platform with no UAE premises, no regulator approval and no partnership with any board or school. A provider describing itself as approved by KHDA should be asked to show the permit number.

After the Diploma comes a piece of administration that no tutoring quote mentions and many UAE families discover too late. To use an international school certificate for university admission or employment inside the Emirates, it has to be recognised through the Ministry of Education's equivalency process. The requirements differ by curriculum track, and the time it takes to assemble documents is not trivial in a summer that already contains results day and university deadlines.

For the British track the published requirements are specific. A student must show one accredited subject at Advanced Level at a grade of no less than E, or two accredited subjects at Advanced Subsidiary Level at the same grade, and must pass five accredited subjects at GCSE or IGCSE at no less than grade E or grade 3. Arabic and Islamic education are not counted among those five. That last detail is worth knowing, because at least one ranking competitor page tells UAE parents they need six IGCSE subjects. For the American track, English proficiency is shown by IELTS academic 5, TOEFL iBT 61, or 450 in the SAT reading and writing section, with at least 450 in SAT Mathematics.

For the International Baccalaureate, this page states no points threshold, and a parent should be wary of any page that does without citing the Ministry. Nothing in the sourced material we hold publishes an IB figure, so the honest answer is to check moe.gov.ae or the emirate's attestation authority directly. That is a thirty-minute job that protects a two-year investment, and it is not something IB Gram performs, guarantees or charges for.

Where tutoring genuinely connects to equivalency is upstream. A student who drops a subject in DP1 to lighten a timetable, or switches Mathematics route to protect a grade, may be changing what their final certificate set shows. Before any such decision, read the equivalency requirements and the named universities' own published entry requirements. No tutoring is required for equivalency, and nobody should tell you otherwise; the process is a regulatory one with a published channel.

Availability is the thing this market conceals most consistently. A Mathematics AA HL slot at 6pm Gulf Standard Time in February is a genuinely scarce commodity, and no honest platform can promise one on demand. When the specialist your child's subject needs is not free at the hour you want, there are four real options and we say which applies rather than filling the slot with whoever is available.

The first is a different hour. A 5pm or a 9pm Gulf Standard Time lesson often opens a tutor who is fully booked at 6pm, and for a DP2 student the later slot frequently works better anyway, after dinner and the first pass at homework. The second is a different shape: two shorter sessions a week instead of one long one, which suits timing practice better than content teaching. The third is a tutor who covers an adjacent specialism honestly: a Physics HL teacher taking the mechanics and waves work while the option topics wait for the specialist to free up.

The fourth is to wait, and sometimes that is the right advice. If a family's evidence says the real problem is the Extended Essay question rather than the weekly subject grade, the correct answer may be three hours with a research supervisor next week rather than a weekly subject slot in six weeks' time. Telling a parent that costs us a booking and saves them money, which is the trade this page is built on.

What we will not do is substitute quietly. If the person teaching your child is not the specialist the plan named, you are told before the lesson, not after it. The same applies to the free trial lesson: it exists so that a family can test the diagnosis and the fit before any payment, and if the trial shows the match is wrong, the next step is a different tutor rather than a conversation about commitment.