Guides for parents
Short, practical answers to the questions parents ask before and after hiring a shadow teacher in the UAE.
- Who hires shadow teachers in the UAE?
Parents, schools or centres: who employs the shadow teacher, who pays, and who they report to.
- Other names for a shadow teacher
LSA, inclusion assistant, one-to-one, para-educator, RBT: the same job under different names, and which to search for.
- Shadow teacher vs special educator: what is the difference?
One supports a child inside the mainstream lesson, the other plans specialist teaching. Which does your child need?
- Shadow teacher vs LSA vs SEN tutor
Three roles parents mix up: in-class support, school-employed assistant, after-school tutor. How to tell them apart.
- When does a child need a shadow teacher?
The classroom signs, how the school decides, what it should try first, and for how long.
- Shadow teacher qualifications in the UAE
No single licence exists. The degrees, training, checks and experience that matter, and what schools require.
- How to interview a shadow teacher
What to prepare, ten questions that reveal real experience, the trial session, and what to agree before day one.
- Does KHDA require schools to accept an external shadow teacher?
What Dubai's inclusion framework expects of schools, what it does not, and the position in other emirates.
- How schools add a shadow teacher to their approved-staff list
The documents, the safeguarding check, the timeline and the school agreement, step by step.
- How to judge whether a Dubai school is genuinely inclusive for autism
Not a list of schools: the questions and a visit checklist that show whether a school's inclusion provision is real.
- A shadow teacher for autism: what to expect
The first weeks, daily support, sensory and social needs, working with therapists, and how support fades.
- A shadow teacher for ADHD: what to expect
Focus, transitions, executive function, behaviour strategies, homework, and how support is reduced over time.