IB and IGCSE tutors for Maryam Island families

Searches from waterfront addresses in Sharjah skew towards two phrases: a tutor for a specific subject, and help catching up. The second is the more honest description of what is wanted, and it is also the harder brief, because catching up is not a subject. Before any teaching happens, somebody has to establish what the student has actually covered and what the new course assumed they had, and those two lists are rarely compared by anyone.

The reason nobody compares them is that no single person holds both. The previous school knows what it taught and no longer has the student. The new school knows its own scheme of work and has met the student twice. The parent has a report card in a different format. The student, asked what they have covered, will reasonably say they do not know, because syllabus structure is not something students track. A tutor working across both is the only party positioned to build the comparison.

That is why the first product on this page is a map rather than a course. Four to six sessions working from the previous school's syllabus, the old reports and the new scheme of work produces a topic-level list of what is genuinely missing. In our experience that list is usually shorter and more specific than parents expect - two or three topics in two subjects rather than a general deficit - and it converts an anxious open-ended worry into a finite piece of work.

Because lessons are delivered one-to-one over live video, an arriving family does not need to solve the logistics of a stranger visiting an apartment they have barely unpacked, and does not need a spare room. A laptop, a quiet corner and headphones is the whole requirement. IB Gram does not offer home visits anywhere in the UAE; that is a service we run only in India, and we would rather state it here than let you discover it later.

The table below sets out the commonest transitions into Sharjah schools and what each one actually requires. It is deliberately organised by where the student is coming from rather than by subject, because the gap depends almost entirely on the previous system's assessment style. A student arriving from a curriculum that tested recall needs technique; one arriving from a curriculum that tested extended writing needs content.

Read the fourth column carefully, because it is where families most often misjudge. The gap to close is usually not a list of topics; it is a mode of assessment. A student moving from a national curriculum into IGCSE frequently knows more content than their classmates and scores lower, because the questions ask for applied reasoning rather than reproduction. Teaching that student more content is the intuitive response and the wrong one.

The fifth column gives the support period we typically see, and it is shorter than families assume. Most transitions settle inside a term when they are mapped properly at the start. The transitions that take longer are the ones involving a new language of instruction, or a move into the Diploma from a system with no independent-research component, because those involve building a working habit rather than filling a gap.

One structural caution. A mid-year arrival into Year 11 or DP2 is a different proposition from one into Year 10 or DP1, because the exam entry and the coursework schedule are already fixed. Cambridge candidates in the UAE sit the June series, with November as the resit route, and final entries are lodged by the centre months ahead of the June papers - the exact date comes from the statement of entry rather than from a summary. A January arrival therefore works inside entry decisions the previous school or the new one has already taken, and the useful move is to get a copy of the statement of entry in the first week rather than to assume anything can still be changed.

Arriving families usually try to solve everything in the first fortnight and then lose momentum. A sequenced first term works better, because the information needed to make good decisions does not exist on day one. The table below sets out the order we use, and the logic is simple: gather, map, target, then commit. Nothing irreversible should be bought in weeks one to three.

Weeks one and two are for watching. The student is adjusting socially as much as academically, and the first pieces of marked work are not yet reliable indicators of anything. What is worth doing in this window is administrative: getting the school's scheme of work, the syllabus codes from the exam entry, the internal coursework deadline list if the student is in the Diploma, and the previous school's final reports in a readable form.

Weeks three to six are the mapping window. By this point there is real marked work, the student has a view about which lessons are confusing, and a tutor can compare the two syllabuses meaningfully. This is where the four-to-six-session mapping block belongs. The output should be a short written document naming the topics, because a map in somebody's memory is not useful at the parent meeting in week eight.

From week seven onwards the work is targeted and measurable, and the quantity should fall rather than rise. A household that is still buying four sessions a week in March for a student who arrived in January has either misjudged the gap or never mapped it. The honest end state for most transitions is one weekly session in one subject, and then nothing.

Families relocating to the UAE research schools, fees and curricula thoroughly and almost never discover in advance that their child will study Arabic. The basis is federal: private schools are not obliged to follow a specific curriculum beyond Arabic language, social studies and Islamic studies, but must adhere to the Ministry's general regulations. So a British or IB timetable in Sharjah carries those subjects alongside everything the board requires.

Dubai's regulator publishes the most detailed account of how this works, and it is useful reading even for a Sharjah family because it shows the mechanics. KHDA calculates mandatory-subject instructional time on a 40-minute lesson unit, permits schools to vary lesson length provided total weekly time is met, and advises that any mandatory-subject lesson should be at least 25 minutes. It also requires separate classes for Arab and non-Arab students in Arabic as a first language, Islamic Education and Social Studies, stating that combined classes are strictly prohibited.

For an arriving child the practical consequence is that the stream matters more than the subject name. Arabic as a first language and Arabic as an additional language are different courses with different expectations, and a newly arrived non-Arabic speaker placed correctly in the additional-language stream has a manageable task. The content is also controlled: KHDA states that for these subjects the use of any different or additional content, without prior permission from the Ministry, is strictly prohibited, so support means working with the school's own material.

The sensible year-one target is not fluency. It is script, high-frequency vocabulary and the ability to follow the lesson, which is achievable with thirty to forty-five minutes two or three times a week. Families who attempt an intensive Arabic programme alongside an IGCSE catch-up in the same term usually abandon both. And for anyone planning ahead to equivalency: Arabic and Islamic education are not counted among the five required subjects on the British track, which removes one source of pressure.

A practical section, because it is a real question on the waterfront and nobody writes about it. Apartment living changes the logistics of tutoring in ways a villa does not. There is usually no spare study. There may be a sibling doing homework at the same table. Sound carries. A visiting tutor means a stranger in a small shared space, at a time when the household is probably still unpacking and the building may still be filling.

One-to-one over live video resolves most of that quietly. The requirement is a laptop or tablet, a stable connection, headphones and a chair facing away from the room's traffic. Headphones matter more than the room does: they remove the sibling, the television and the lift lobby in one step, and they let the student speak at normal volume without the household listening. Families who set this up properly in week one rarely revisit it.

The second practical advantage for an arriving household is that the written record survives the chaos of a move. The shared board and the annotated work from each session are saved, so a student who is still finding their books can go back to a worked solution from three weeks ago. In a period when physical notes are frequently in a box somewhere, that is more useful than it sounds.

The comparison table below sets out the trade honestly, including where in-home provision is genuinely better. We would rather describe the real difference than claim the formats are identical. For a younger child in an unfamiliar country, an adult in the room has value, and our answer is to change the session shape - shorter, more frequent, parent within earshot - rather than to argue the point.

Arriving families are making every financial decision at once, and tutoring usually gets a number attached before anyone knows what is needed. The table below puts the published market bands into the context of a first year, so the figure can be budgeted properly rather than guessed. These are market rates from the sources named, read in October 2026, not an IB Gram price list, and none of them is a quote for your child.

The useful framing is to treat the transition as a project cost rather than a recurring one. A mapping block plus a term of targeted catch-up in one or two subjects is a defined amount of money with an end date. An open-ended weekly commitment in four subjects, started before any mapping, is the arrangement that quietly becomes a permanent line in the household budget. Families who front-load the diagnosis generally spend less in total.

Some context for the fee side of the picture, since arriving families are usually comparing school costs at the same time. Dubai's regulator confirmed in May 2026 that there would be no increase in private school fees in that emirate for the 2026-27 academic year, under an economic incentives package valued at AED 1.5 billion. That is a Dubai measure rather than a Sharjah one, where fees are approved by the Sharjah Private Education Authority, but it is the kind of published fact worth knowing before negotiating anything.

IB Gram does not publish a fixed rate card on these pages, because the figure depends on subject, level and the balance between teaching and supervision. A short consultation gives you the band before you commit, and for an arriving family we would normally recommend starting with the mapping block precisely because it is the cheapest way to find out how little or how much is needed.

Arriving families meet a paperwork layer alongside the academic one, and the two get confused. It is worth separating them clearly. School admission paperwork is handled by the school and the emirate's regulator. Certificate equivalency, which converts a foreign school qualification into something a UAE university or employer can accept, is a Ministry of Education process that happens at the end of schooling, not at the start.

The published British-track requirement is specific and worth knowing early, because it affects subject choices years in advance. A student must pass five accredited subjects in GCSE or IGCSE certificates at a grade no lower than E or grade 3, and must additionally show one accredited subject at Advanced Level at grade E or above, or two at Advanced Subsidiary Level at the same grade. Arabic and Islamic education are not included among the five. One competitor page tells UAE candidates they need six subjects, which does not match the published clarification.

For the American track, the same clarification sets English proficiency at a score of 5 in the IELTS academic test, 61 in the TOEFL iBT, or 450 in the reading and writing section of the SAT, with mathematics requiring at least 450 in SAT Math before applying. For the IB, no points threshold appears in that source, so this page does not state one. Any figure quoted to you for IB equivalency without a Ministry page behind it should be treated as unverified.

Two boundaries. Equivalency is a process the Ministry runs; no tutoring provider performs or guarantees it, and we can only tell you what the published requirement says and where to verify it. And nothing in the process requires tutoring - implying otherwise would be a false-urgency claim about a regulatory procedure. Keep original certificates safe from the moment they are issued, because they are what the process asks for.

A student arriving mid-DP1 lands in the middle of a coursework process, and the temptation to find someone to accelerate it is strongest in exactly this situation. So the boundary needs stating without qualification. Internal Assessments, the Extended Essay, the Theory of Knowledge essay and the MYP Personal Project must be the student's own work, and the student signs a declaration confirming that. One page competing for these searches sells finished Internal Assessments; buying one is malpractice under IB rules and the consequence falls on the candidate.

What legitimate support looks like is narrower and, for a late arrival, genuinely valuable. A tutor can teach the underlying content, explain what each criterion rewards in plain language, help narrow a research question until it is answerable inside the word limit, question whether a claim in a draft is actually evidenced, point out that data has no uncertainty treatment, and read a draft against the published criteria and name the weak criterion. For a student who missed the introduction to the whole process, that explanation alone removes most of the disadvantage.

What a tutor must not do is author any part of the submission - not a paragraph, not a methodology, not a conclusion, not a results set. We say this at the start of any 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 what the student legitimately holds through school.

The practical priority for a mid-DP1 arrival is sequencing rather than speed. Getting the Extended Essay subject and research question agreed early matters more than the writing, because a late or badly chosen question costs months. We would normally put that ahead of content catch-up in the first month, even where the content gap looks larger.

If the move has not happened yet, the most useful thing you can do is start before it. Two or three sessions in the weeks before arrival, working from the new school's scheme of work and the student's current reports, puts the student into their first lesson knowing roughly what has been covered without them. Because lessons are delivered online, the location of the family during those sessions is irrelevant, which is one of the few genuine advantages of the format.

If the move has already happened, send the previous school's final reports, the new school's scheme of work if you have it, and the syllabus codes from the exam entry. We read those and propose a mapping block rather than a weekly commitment, because the right amount of tutoring cannot be known before the map exists. Most families are relieved to find the recommendation is less than they came expecting to buy.

The introductory session is at no charge - one per family, about thirty minutes, with the student present rather than only the parent. For an arriving student that half hour does a second job: it is a low-stakes conversation with an adult who understands the curriculum they have just joined, which is reassuring in a term when very little is familiar. If the match is not right we change the tutor rather than suggest persevering.

On availability, we tell you upfront. Mainstream combinations are almost always covered immediately. Scarce Higher Level subjects in the weeks before a written series can carry a week or two of wait, and where no UAE-based specialist is free we offer one from our wider pool, which is centred on India and includes tutors who have taught these syllabuses to international cohorts for years. Delivery is unchanged, because it was always one-to-one over live video.