The City of Dubai is host to one of the most eclectic and independently minded student bodies in the world. In addition to the tens of thousands of students who are making their way through the British Council international schools in the city, an increasing community of individuals is quietly making a different choice of registering directly with the British Council as their own candidates, and sitting IGCSE, AS and A Level examinations at their own pace, completely independent of any school affiliation. Others are employed people who are adding qualifications that their jobs now demand. Others are home-educated students, who have never been taught in the conventional classroom. There are those who dropped out of school before they could graduate and are coming back to graduate what they have started. Others are foreign students who require particular grades in subjects to be enrolled in universities and cannot get their grades through any other feasible route. The common denominator of what every individual candidate in Dubai has in common is that they are all facing the same underlying challenge: they have to prepare on the same level as the school-enrolled students without any of the institutional support that the school-enrolled students have by default. This has been the dilemma that Amourion Training Institute has been solving to this day to the private candidates all over Dubai. Dr. Anil Khare is responding to the questions that they pose to us the most.
I have enrolled myself with the British Council in Dubai as a private student. Where do I even begin without a school or teacher guiding me?
Dr. Anil Khare: The very first and the most important step is to have a proper and structured preparation plan which is specifically set up around your examination registration; the subjects you are sitting, the examination board you are registered with, the specific papers those subjects require and the examination session you are targeting. In the absence of a school offering this framework on automatic basis, the private candidates have to construct it themselves, or employ a specialist tutor who constructs it on their behalf. At Amourion, we start all individual candidate engagement sessions with a thorough diagnostic assessment that determines the current subject knowledge, gaps in comparison to the syllabus and a timeline of session-by-session preparation aligned exactly to the British Council examination date. Since that, each session has an intended purpose in an overall plan - what would otherwise be the structure that a school would provide throughout the entire preparation period.
I am a working professional in Dubai who is a private candidate sitting A Level Economics. Is tuition really something that can be made to fit around a full-time career?
Dr. Anil Khare: Yes, and working professionals are one of the most motivated and ultimately successful categories of privacy-seeking candidates whom we provide. One of the best things about one-on-one tuition is the flexibility that comes with it, particularly to candidates with tight schedules at work. The sessions may be scheduled during evenings, weekends or through our full supported online platform which provides the same standard of specialist tuition as the sessions in person through shared digital whiteboard and interactivity. The secret of working candidates is steadiness rather than intensity, two well-structured, well-concentrated sessions a week, persistently kept up over an adequate preparation period, will always out do a series of sporadic intensive study crammed into the last weeks before the examination. We construct preparation schedules specially around the hours that each candidate has available to him, and we work backwards to the date of his examination, to make sure that the syllabus is covered, the past papers are practiced and the technique of the examination is perfected before it is too late.
I am a private candidate in Dubai and am currently sitting several IGCSE subjects. What is your strategy in preparation in more than one subject at a time?
Dr. Anil Khare: Having several IGCSE subjects as a private student means that there is some level of coordination required that school-enrolled students are automatically provided with through their timetable but to which the private student must actively add. We do this with built-in scheduling - mapping all the subjects against the schedule of exams, and setting up the intensity of preparation across the entire schedule. The number of sessions allocated to subjects with higher content load or with higher personal challenge is proportionately more. As examination dates approach, preparation transitions to examination technique - past paper practice, mark-scheme analysis and simulation of timed examination across all subjects in turn. Students who take multiple IGCSEs through this structured strategy always tend to get results that compare favorably with those of students who are enrolled in schools although there is no institutional support.
Independent Examination. Expert Preparation. Real Results.
The decision to go directly to the British Council as a private candidate is a radical and absolutely valid scholastic choice. What the preparation behind it only has to conform to is the standard the examinations require and that is exactly what Amourion Training Institute has provided to the privately-taken examinations across all of Dubai over the last 20 years. Whether you are sitting one subject or six, at IGCSE, AS or A Level, our specialist tutors provide the complete preparation framework that replaces everything a school would otherwise provide.
Contact Amourion Training Institute — Dubai
Phone: +971 55 956 4344 | +971 4 355 4850
Email: training@amourion.com
Website: www.amourion.com
Dubai Centers: Sheikh Zayed Road | Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Office 2401, Fortune Tower | Dubai Silicon Oasis, Office 410, SIT Tower Abu Dhabi: Hamdan Street