Private tuitions necessary: UAE parents

Pressure at schools is considered to be the main reason for students and parents to decide in favor of private classes, but there may be other reasons too.

Paid classes usually are not approved in the UAE, but many teachers give private tuitions to students outside the school premises. Some private tutors, who are not necessarily certified teachers, even ask for incredible amounts of money. An hour of private tutoring in English could cost you somewhere from 150 Dhs to 450 Dhs, depending on the level of your child and your location. If you find it cheaper , you should consider yourself lucky or the tutor “unaware of the competition”.

A recent poll showed that most parents consider such classes to be an essential part of their children’s lives. The prevailing reasons for this tendency is said to be the pressure in Dubai schools and the preference of individual attention over a packed class of 30 to 35 students. But one may say that private schools are popular for the small numbers of the students in class. Here is the real problem: no matter how many students are in class, if the teacher has no experience, motivation and qualifications to perform his duty, his students will always need further help.

According to fifteen per cent of the respondents to the recent poll, the pressure at schools is the main reason that makes students and their parents to resort to tuitions. Ten per cent of the participants in the poll think that parents are too busy to help children with their studies at home. But this may not be the actual reason! It is very much possible, the roots of this situation to be dipped into the mismatch between the expectations of the creators of the textbooks and the curriculums and on the other hand – the local school and its staff.

Therefore, 28 per cent of the participants claim that private classes can be required but it depends on each unique case and family.

For example some children need help with certain languages. If both parents don’t have adequate knowledge in these languages, their only option is to opt for private lessons. Here again, the question pops out: What is the role of the school in this dilemma? Why schools do not have support classes and offer extra tuition to students who need such?

However, Dubai schools usually follow a strict policy of no private classes by teachers and people should keep the lessons a secret. The teacher usually goes to the house of the child when it is necessary and the kid should not talk about that in school. This practice applies even more to Indian schools. Some people say that when their children were in an Indian school they took tuitions. However, when they moved them to an IB curriculum they didn’t need private classes anymore. But the IB schools in Dubai are only six out of 146 and the probability of your child being offered a space is slim.

The online poll also indicated that many parents do not believe in tuitions. Sixteen per cent of the parents believe that studies in school should be enough while 31 per cent said tuitions can be done away as long as parents try a little harder. We advocate study at home with the help of online resources, but this may not be suitable for every student’s needs.

Individual tutors are not the only ones that offer paid classes – there are also many institutions that provide classes after school. Most of these options are hard to follow for a long period of time, quite costly and time consuming.