We are not going to give you a figure. Our own rate card is not signed off, and publishing an invented range would be exactly the behaviour this site exists to argue against. What we can do is tell you what actually moves the number, so that when you have three quotes in front of you, you can tell which one is cheap and which one is merely incomplete.
The five things that actually drive the price
1. Hours, and who decided them
This is the largest single factor and the one least often examined. Full-time classroom support costs roughly twice what half-time costs, so the recommendation of how many hours your child needs is the biggest financial decision in the whole arrangement — and in most of this market it is made by the organisation that gets paid for those hours.
Ask what the number is based on. Ask whether anyone's pay changes if it goes up. A provider who has thought about this will answer immediately; the answer itself matters less than whether they have one.
2. Whether anyone is supervising
An assistant working alone in a classroom costs a great deal less to supply than one working to written targets under a supervisor who observes, reviews the data and changes the plan. Both get described as a shadow teacher. The price gap between them is not a margin, it is a different service.
If a quote seems low, this is usually where the money is missing. That does not automatically make it wrong — but you should know you are buying supervision or not buying it.
3. Qualifications, and how relevant they are
A qualified teacher, a psychology graduate and someone trained on the job command different rates. Relevance matters more than level: an assistant with specific experience of your child's profile is often more useful than a more qualified generalist. What you are paying for is what they can do on Tuesday, not what is on the certificate.
4. The school's own arrangement
Some schools require support staff to be engaged through an approved provider, some allow families to arrange their own, and some employ the assistant themselves and charge the family directly. These have very different cost structures and very different accountability. Ask the school which model applies before you speak to a single provider.
5. The length and the exit
The number that matters is not the monthly one. It is the monthly one multiplied by however many months this continues — and that depends entirely on whether anyone has written down what would make the support unnecessary. A slightly more expensive arrangement that ends in eighteen months is far cheaper than a cheap one that runs for five years.
What a quote usually leaves out
Ask for each of these explicitly. Every one of them is a normal thing to charge for, and every one of them is a normal thing to leave out of the headline number.
- School holidays, half-terms and the summer — paid or not paid
- Absence, on either side, and what happens to the fee
- Supervision and plan-writing time, if billed separately
- Written reports, and reports requested by the school
- Attendance at school meetings, and phone calls with you
- Travel, particularly outside the emirate the provider is based in
- Notice period, and what happens if the school ends the arrangement
- Any charge to release your child's records if you leave
The last one deserves particular attention. Some providers do charge families to retrieve their own child's history. It is much better to discover that before you commit than at the point you are trying to leave.
The question that makes quotes comparable
Send all of them the same sentence:
“What is the total I would pay in the next twelve months, assuming nothing goes wrong and nothing changes — including holidays, reports, meetings and supervision?”
One number, one year, everything in. It is a slightly awkward question and it is the only one that produces comparable answers. A provider who cannot give you that figure has not thought about your year, only about their month.
Cheaper is sometimes the wrong question
There is a version of this where a family spends carefully for four years on an arrangement nobody ever intended to end. There is another where a family spends more for eighteen months on something supervised, measured and deliberately faded, and then stops. The second is cheaper, and it does not look cheaper on the day you sign.
The single most useful thing you can ask a provider quoting for classroom support is what would have to be true for your child not to need it. If the answer is a shrug, the number they have given you is not really a price. It is a subscription with no end date.