Dubai: Parents in Dubai are spoilt for choices, when it comes private tutors.
Apart from those shady institutions that offer one size fits all solutions as well as individual tutors who offer door to door services and teachers who operate from their houses, some smart looking high end tutoring centres have mushroomed over the last four, five years.
These centres are based mainly in Knowledge Village, but they also have their presence in other parts of the city.
Calling themselves after-school activity centres rather than tutorials, these institutes offer customized solutions depending on the needs of a student and the pocket of the parent.
A once in a week 50 minute one-to-one class might cost as high asDh10,000 for whole academic year, while for a small group it could range somewhere between Dh7,000 to Dh5,000 annually, depending on the number of days opted.
There are also tutorials who offer hourly classes with prices ranging from Dh500 per hour to Dh100 per hour, depending on the subjects and options chosen.
Some of the most popular high-end centres are Power Tutoring, Finishing Touch which is the franchisee of US math brand Mathenasium, Dubai Tuitions, The Tutoring Centre, Knowledge Quotient etc.
With the society going virtual for everything, there are a fair number of organizations offering online tutoring as well as there are website that facilitate demand and supply by hosting both tutors as well as students who can meet on the website.
One of the popular such site is myprivatetutor.ae, which offers membership for both tutors and students, from where students can pick and choose from a number of tutors.
Other websites offering online tutoring or hosting services are tutorindubai.com, thetutorcrowd.com, dubai.tutoringcentre.com etc.
Despite, all these exclusive choices, the tutorials that are most popular are those that are operated by individuals or teachers through door-to-door service or those that are operating from a teacher’s house.
Reason for their popularity is that they are more affordable, obviously for the fact that they don’t have any rents, salaries or service charges to pay, neither they have to maintain offices. This is the reason some of the centres are crying foul.
Vikram Ghor, who is the manager of dubai-tuitions.com or Dubai Tuitions, which is based in Knowledge village calls on authorities to check the growing number of ‘shady’ tutors.
“Anybody who has free time or doesn’t have a job is going around houses and offering tuitions at cheap rates, which is obviously affecting our business. The proliferation of tutors needs to be checked as it is both unsafe and downgrades quality. It also affects us because people prefer these tutors because they are cheaper and we can’t offer that price because we have to look after a lot of expenses,” said Ghor, who offers tutorials at Knowledge Village forDh100 per hour.
However, most parents feel door-to-door service is better because it is both cost-effective and saves time.
By Shafaat Shahbandari Staff Reporter© Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
