Study and exam skills
Parents rightly ask where help ends and doing-the-work begins. This guide states the rules by assessment type, and how we supervise research and writing without crossing the line.
The line is simple to state: a tutor may teach, question, model, plan and review; the work a student submits must be the student’s own. Anything the tutor produces that ends up in submitted work crosses it. The practical rule we use is supervise, never write.
This guide is for parents and secondary students using tutoring alongside coursework, IB internal assessments or the extended essay. It states the rules by assessment type, what a tutor legitimately does inside them, and how to talk to teenagers about why the line exists. It takes about six minutes to read.
Academic integrity rules exist because assessed work is evidence: the certificate says what this student can do, and it stops meaning anything the moment someone else’s hand is in it. Schools and awarding bodies treat breaches seriously, with consequences up to disqualification, so this is not etiquette. It is the terms of the qualification.
The grey zone is real, though. Is explaining a concept help or authorship? Is commenting on a draft? The test that resolves almost every case: after the session, can the student reproduce and defend every idea and every sentence in the submitted work, alone? Teaching passes that test. Ghostwriting fails it.
Two assessment types deserve emphasis because they confuse families most. An internal assessment (IA) is coursework marked by the school and moderated by the IB; most Diploma subjects include one. The extended essay (EE) is, by the IB’s own definition, an independent, self-directed piece of research finishing with a 4,000-word paper. Both carry the student’s declaration that the work is theirs, which is why the right-hand column is absolute.
| Assessment type | What a tutor may do | What a tutor may not do |
|---|---|---|
| Homework and classwork | Teach the skill being practised, work similar examples, review errors the student made alone | Complete or correct the assigned task before it is submitted |
| IGCSE coursework and projects | Explain the criteria, teach required skills, review drafts against the rubric with questions not edits | Rewrite passages, supply content, or produce any part of the submitted piece |
| IB internal assessments (IAs) | Explain the assessment criteria, help plan the investigation, teach the underlying methods | Choose the data, run the analysis, or write any section of the IA |
| IB extended essay | Coach the process: refining the question, planning, citation practice, time management | Draft, edit into shape, or source material on the student’s behalf; the EE must be independent, self-directed research |
| Examinations | Prepare the student: past papers, mark schemes, timing, technique | Anything during the exam itself; there is no legitimate role inside the hall |
The same line applies to AI writing tools, and schools increasingly treat them identically to human ghostwriters. If the student could not have written the sentence unaided and cannot defend it, it is not theirs, whether a person or a model produced it. Many schools now publish their own AI policies, and those policies take precedence; check yours before assuming any tool is permitted.
Used within the rules, AI tools have legitimate roles parallel to a tutor’s: explaining a concept, generating practice questions, quizzing retrieval. The test is unchanged: after using it, can the student reproduce and defend every idea in the submitted work? If yes, it was teaching. If no, it was authorship.
Our tutors work inside these rules as a condition of working with us at all. On coursework and research assignments they coach process: unpacking the question, planning the structure, teaching the skills, and reviewing drafts with margin questions instead of red pen. “What evidence supports this claim?” improves the essay and leaves it the student’s. Rewriting the sentence does not.
We follow the school’s academic integrity policy, and the awarding body’s, without exception, and we will tell a family plainly when a request crosses the line. The same principle runs the other way: our guide to tutoring versus homework completion helps parents spot support that has drifted into dependency, and the planning guide shows what legitimate help on a long assignment actually looks like week by week.
Sometimes a parent realises late that submitted work contains more of a helper’s hand than it should: a sibling’s sentences, a previous tutor’s draft, a copied passage. The right response is early and honest: tell the school before they discover it. Schools treat self-reported problems as teaching moments and discovered ones as misconduct, and the difference in outcome for the student is enormous.
Then reset the arrangement that produced it. A tutor who crossed the line once under deadline pressure will cross it again unless the terms change: supervise, never write, and no “last-minute checks” that quietly become editing. Our tutors work inside written terms to that effect, precisely so that no family is left improvising the boundary at midnight before a deadline.
Teenagers meet integrity pressure at exactly the age when the work feels impossible and the stakes feel enormous. The conversation that works is honest about both: yes, the extended essay is hard and the deadline is real, and that is why the qualification is worth having. A grade purchased with someone else’s work is a debt that comes due at university, where nobody rescues the writer.
Give them the practical version of the rule, the one they can apply at midnight before a deadline: if you could not explain and defend every sentence to your teacher tomorrow, it is not yours. If everything in the work passes that test, they have done something genuinely worth the certificate.
If your family would like support that stays firmly on the right side of this line, our IGCSE exam support and IB tutoring pages describe how we work, and every engagement begins with a complimentary 30-minute discovery call.
WhatsApp +62 858 6969 6869 · info@privatetutoringbali.com · We reply within one working day.