IB and IGCSE tutors for Al Juraina families

Every competitor page researched for this project compares itself against an unnamed set of other platforms. That is not a comparison, it is a straw man. The table below compares provider models instead - agency, marketplace, independent tutor, tuition centre, school-run support - and quotes published figures only where a provider published them, with the month they were read. We do not comment on any competitor's quality or legality, only on their own stated prices.

The structural point is that each model carries a different cost base. An agency adds a matching and quality layer and charges for it. A marketplace is cheaper per hour and leaves verification to you. An independent tutor keeps the whole fee and may or may not hold the MoHRE permit, which is worth asking about. A tuition centre spreads a teacher's hour across several students, which is why the per-student rate is lowest and the attention per student is too.

School-run support is the one model most families forget to price, and it is frequently free or near-free. Many schools run revision sessions, clinics or coursework drop-ins that cover exactly what a parent is about to pay for. Asking the school what it already provides, before buying anything, is the first cost-saving step and it costs nothing. We would rather say that than pretend private tutoring is the only route.

One honest note about our own position in that table. IB Gram is a matching platform rather than an employer of tutors, delivery is online one-to-one, and we do not publish a fixed hourly rate on these pages because the figure depends on subject, level and the teaching-to-supervision balance. The consultation gives you the band before you commit. That is a less satisfying answer than a number, and it is the accurate one.

Parents often treat an hourly rate as a fixed property of a tutor, when much of it is a property of the booking. Session length, time of day, distance, notice period, subject scarcity and whether the work is teaching or supervision all move the number, and some of them move it a long way. Knowing which levers exist means a family can reduce the bill without reducing the quality, which is a better outcome than negotiating a specialist down to a generalist's rate.

The largest single lever is subject scarcity, and it is largely outside your control. Physics at Higher Level in the spring term prices towards the specialist and premium bands because the pool is small and demand concentrates. The second largest is travel, and it is entirely within your control: choosing an online format removes roughly the difference between the AED 150-300 and AED 180-500 published bands, because that difference is substantially the drive.

The third lever is the one families underuse. A 90-minute booking is normally priced below two separate 60-minute sessions, and for a student above about sixteen working on extended written output, the longer session is also pedagogically better. That is an unusual case of the cheaper option being the better one, and it is worth asking about explicitly rather than assuming the quote is per hour regardless of block length.

The lever that should never be pulled is credential. Paying a budget rate for a tutor who does not know the specific board and level is not a saving; it is a different purchase that happens to cost less. Published budget bands buy homework supervision and content revision, which is genuinely useful for some students and genuinely useless for a Year 11 candidate losing marks on practical-paper method language.

A quoted hourly rate is not always the whole figure, and the additions are rarely hidden so much as unmentioned. The table below lists what we see in this market, how each one is usually treated, and the question to ask before the first session. None of these items is unreasonable in itself; the problem is discovering them in month three rather than in the first conversation.

Materials are the commonest. Some providers charge for a workbook or a question bank; others use the school's own material and the board's published resources. Our position is the second, and there is a reason beyond cost: we do not reproduce or supply board syllabus documents, past papers, mark schemes or grade-boundary tables, so the material a student works from should be what they legitimately hold through their school, referenced against the official source.

On tax, this page will not state the VAT treatment of tuition fees as a fact, because doing so accurately requires a Federal Tax Authority citation and we are not going to invent one. The useful question for a parent is narrower and entirely answerable: ask any provider whether the price they quoted you includes VAT, and get the answer in writing before you pay. A quote that is silent on the point is a quote you cannot compare.

On the word free, one caution. If something is offered at no charge with a condition attached - a trial of a certain length, one per family, eligibility limits - the condition should be stated on the same screen as the offer. Our own introductory session is at no charge, one per family, about thirty minutes, with the student present, and those are all the conditions there are. Any offer where the conditions are harder to find than the word free is worth reading twice.

Hourly rates are hard to budget from. The table below converts the published bands into two realistic shapes: a term of targeted IGCSE support, and a structured two-year Diploma arrangement. The figures are built from market bands read in October 2026, and they are illustrative arithmetic rather than a quote from us. Your own number depends on subject, level and the hour count, which is exactly the point.

The IGCSE example is deliberately small, because for most of the problems on this page it should be. A diagnostic block of three sessions, then eight targeted sessions on one component, is eleven sessions. At the qualified-tutor band that is a defined and modest commitment with a clear end, and it is the shape that fixes a practical-paper problem or a method-marks problem. Compare that with a weekly slot in three subjects for a full year, which is roughly ninety sessions, and the difference is not marginal.

The Diploma example is larger and should be, because the commitment is genuinely two years with coursework in the middle. The structure that keeps it predictable is to separate the three uses of an hour: weekly teaching in term time, a small number of supervision sessions clustered around the school's internal deadlines, and an intensive phase in the final weeks. Families who buy a flat weekly commitment for two years instead usually pay more and get less in the final term, when they need the hours most.

For wider context on the cost of education in the region, Dubai's regulator confirmed in May 2026 that private school fees in that emirate would not increase for the 2026-27 academic year, under an economic incentives package valued at AED 1.5 billion. Fees at Sharjah private schools are approved by the emirate's own authority rather than by Dubai's, so that measure does not apply here, but it is a published anchor worth knowing when the household budget is being set.

Price and permit are separate questions that parents sometimes merge. Private tutoring in the UAE is regulated: the MoHRE private tutor work permit was introduced by Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023, it is granted free of charge for two years, and individuals offering private tutoring without a permit from MoHRE are subject to fines and penalties outlined in the applicable laws. Because the permit costs nothing, a low rate is not evidence that someone lacks one, and a high rate is not evidence that they hold one.

The eligibility list is wide: teachers registered in government or private schools, employees in the government and private sectors, unemployed individuals, university students, and school students aged 15 to 18. MoHRE's service page is titled Issuance of a New Work Permit - Private Tutor Licensing, lists no fees and a two-working-day completion time, and is accessed through the MoHRE smart app, website and e-services system. That is the route to point any independent tutor at if they do not hold one.

No fine schedule is published. Khaleej Times reported that the ministry did not specify the fine amounts or detail the penalties, and figures circulating online could not be verified, so treat any specific amount you read as unsourced. Separately, a school teacher tutoring their own enrolled students raises a professional-ethics issue rather than only a permit one: Abu Dhabi's regulator has rules barring school staff from paid private tutoring of students at their own school, and the permit carries a code of conduct addressing the same point.

A tutoring business with premises and staff is a different legal category and needs its own permit from the relevant authority. IB Gram holds no permit, approval, accreditation or licence from KHDA, SPEA, ADEK, MoHRE, the Ministry of Education, the IB, Cambridge or Pearson, and we state that plainly rather than borrow authority we do not have. Any provider claiming regulator approval for tutoring should be asked to show the permit number.

The cost case for online delivery in this district is narrower and more honest than the usual version. Al Juraina is central, so the drive from much of the city is not long, and an in-home tutor here is not facing the journey they would face out at Tilal City. The travel premium exists but it is at the lower end of the published range rather than the top.

Where the arithmetic genuinely changes is in what the money buys. For a mainstream IGCSE subject, both formats will find you a competent tutor and the comparison is mostly about the travel component. For a scarce combination - Physics at Higher Level, the quantitative Economics paper, Internal Assessment supervision in a specific discipline - the local pool is small, and a family paying an in-home rate often ends up with a generalist, which is paying more for less. That is the real cost argument.

The second place the arithmetic changes is reliability. A session that starts ten minutes late because of traffic loses the part where the previous week's work is checked, and three of those across a term is a session's worth of consolidation gone without appearing on any bill. Removing travel removes that leak. It is a small effect per session and a real one across a two-year Diploma.

To be explicit: IB Gram does not run home visits in the UAE and nothing here is an offer to send anyone to a Sharjah address. Home visiting is a service we offer only in India. What we sell is one-to-one tuition over live video with a shared screen and a saved board. If an adult in the room is what your child needs, the independent in-home market exists at the published AED 180-500 band, and in a central district like this one you should be negotiating the travel component down.

A cost-focused page has an obligation to name the purchase that is never worth making. One of the pages competing for these searches sells completed Internal Assessments at a published price of several thousand dirhams. Buying one is academic malpractice under IB rules, the consequence falls on the candidate rather than the seller, and it can end a Diploma candidature. No price makes that a reasonable transaction.

Legitimate coursework support costs far less and does more. A tutor can teach the underlying content, explain what each assessment criterion rewards in plain language, help narrow a research question until it is answerable inside the word limit, challenge whether a claim in a draft is actually evidenced, point out that data carries no uncertainty treatment, and read a draft against the published criteria and name the weak criterion. Four to six sessions across a project is a common shape, which is a fraction of the cost of a bought document.

What a tutor must not do is author any part of a submission - not a paragraph, not a methodology, not a conclusion, not a results set. We say this at the start of every supervision block and we say that anything the student did not write has to come out before submission. We also do not reproduce or supply board syllabus documents, past papers, mark schemes or boundary tables; we cite the official source and work from material the student legitimately holds.

There is a cost argument even here. A student who has had sections written for them learns nothing about criterion literacy, which is the same skill that lifts their written papers. So the bought document is not only a risk, it is a worse purchase than the supervision it replaced, at several times the price.

First, ask the school what it already provides. Revision sessions, subject clinics, coursework drop-ins and past-paper access are frequently included in fees and frequently unused. This costs nothing to establish and occasionally ends the conversation, which is a result we are happy to report.

Second, buy a diagnosis before buying hours. Three or four sessions to establish which component is losing marks costs less than a month of weekly lessons and determines whether the answer is eight sessions or forty. That single decision has a larger effect on your total than any negotiation over the hourly rate, and it is the step families under pressure most often skip.

Third, separate teaching from supervision on the quote, and ask what the hours are for. A specialist used on one identified component for four to eight sessions costs a fraction of a year-long weekly commitment and frequently produces the same mark movement. Ask whether a 90-minute booking is priced below two hours, because for a student above sixteen it often is and is also better teaching.

Fourth, establish the terms before paying: materials, VAT, notice period for cancellation, what happens to unused sessions, and what happens if the match is wrong. Then test the match. Our introductory session is at no charge, one per family, about thirty minutes, with the student present, and if the pairing does not work we change the tutor. If a scarce subject carries a wait we will tell you in that first conversation rather than afterwards.