Home tuition in Delhi, one tutor at a time

Delhi is a CBSE city in a way few others are. The Directorate of Education runs the government schools, the municipal corporations and the New Delhi Municipal Council run schools of their own, the Kendriya Vidyalayas serve central government families, and the private schools sit on top of all of it. Almost all of them present the same board paper at the end of Class 10 and Class 12, which is why a tutor in Rohini and a tutor in Kalkaji are usually teaching to the same syllabus.

Two changes are worth carrying in your head. The Delhi government set up 75 CM SHRI schools during the 2025-26 session, declared them specified category schools under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 and affiliated them to CBSE. Separately, the Delhi Board of School Education, created in 2021, is being wound up, with its Schools of Specialised Excellence moving back to CBSE and Class 9 students of 2025-26 registered with CBSE instead. For a parent, both changes point the same way: the board paper your child will sit is a CBSE paper.

The CISCE, which conducts the ICSE and ISC examinations, has its office at Nehru Place, and schools such as The Frank Anthony Public School in Lajpat Nagar follow those courses. CBSE itself is headquartered in the city, at Shiksha Kendra in Preet Vihar. Both boards live here, and a family can end up choosing between them without ever leaving south Delhi.

• Government, municipal, Kendriya Vidyalaya and most private schools in Delhi are CBSE
• The 75 CM SHRI schools opened in 2025-26 are CBSE-affiliated
• CISCE schools exist across the city, ICSE to Class 10 and ISC in Classes 11 and 12

The Directorate of Education calendar for 2026-27 opened the session on 1 April 2026. Summer vacation ran from 11 May to 30 June, there is an autumn break from 17 to 19 October 2026, and winter vacation falls from 1 to 15 January 2027. Mid-term examinations sat between mid-September and mid-October, and the annual examinations for Classes 3 to 9 and Class 11 are set for 15 February to 23 March 2027.

Read that calendar next to the board dates and the year plans itself. CBSE's Class 10 and Class 12 examinations begin around the middle of February, with the 2026 papers starting on 17 February. That places the winter vacation exactly where a board candidate needs it, a fortnight of clear mornings a few weeks before the first paper, and it places the summer vacation where a weaker student can repair a year quietly, without the school week on top.

Class 10 now has a second examination. CBSE decided in June 2025 that from 2026 the Class 10 board would run twice a year, with the February sitting compulsory for everyone and an optional sitting in May for improving up to three subjects, the better score counting. A home tutor plans for February. May is a repair option for a subject that went wrong, and treating it as the main attempt is how a year gets lost.

• Session runs 1 April to March, with winter vacation 1 to 15 January 2027
• CBSE board papers begin in mid-February; the 2026 papers began on 17 February
• The optional Class 10 second examination in May covers up to three subjects

Delhi's school year has a weather-shaped hole in it, and planning around it is part of living here. In November 2025, with GRAP Stage III in force, the Directorate of Education ordered every school under it, along with NDMC, MCD and the Delhi Cantonment Board schools, to run classes up to Class 5 in hybrid mode, both physical and online. In December 2025, under Stage IV, the order extended to classes up to Class 9 and Class 11, while Classes 10 and 12 continued in school for their board year.

For a family paying for tuition, the lesson is simple: an arrangement that only works when the tutor can travel is an arrangement that stops for a fortnight each winter. The same tutor teaching the same child online keeps the thread going. May and June bring the other version of the problem, when afternoon heat pushes every sensible lesson into the early morning or after sunset.

All of this is worth settling with the tutor at the start, in the first week, when agreeing costs nothing. Doing it in the week the air turns severe means improvising with a child who has an examination coming, and something usually gets dropped.

• Under GRAP Stage III in November 2025, classes up to Class 5 went hybrid
• Under Stage IV in December 2025, the order reached Class 9 and Class 11
• Agree the online fallback with the tutor before winter, not during it

Three exams shape Class 11 and 12 here. JEE Main opens the engineering route, NEET-UG the medical one, and CUET-UG the undergraduate seats at Delhi University and other central universities. NTA published its examination calendar up to March 2027 on 16 September 2026, placing the first session of JEE Main 2027 in the second half of January 2027, with the caution that calendar dates stay tentative until each examination's information bulletin appears. NEET-UG and CUET-UG dates for 2027 had not been announced when this page was written.

Delhi University admits undergraduates on CUET-UG scores through its Common Seat Allocation System, which means a Class 12 student in the city is carrying a board syllabus and an entrance syllabus through the same winter. That is the real argument for one-to-one hours: the two syllabuses overlap heavily, and a tutor who knows both can teach a chapter once for both papers.

The engineering route has a local rule that deserves attention before any family moves a child to another city. Admission to DTU, NSUT, IGDTUW, IIIT-Delhi and DSEU goes through JAC Delhi counselling on JEE Main ranks, and according to the JAC Delhi 2026 admission brochure, 85% of the seats belong to candidates who passed the qualifying examination from a recognised school, college or institute inside the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Pass Class 12 from outside Delhi and the same candidate is placed in the outside Delhi region, competing for the smaller share of the same seats.

• JEE Main 2027 session one falls in the second half of January 2027, tentatively
• DU fills undergraduate seats on CUET-UG scores through CSAS
• As per the JAC Delhi 2026 brochure, 85% of those seats need a Delhi Class 12

Delhi has grown its coaching neighbourhoods the way other cities grow markets. Kalu Sarai, the lane beside IIT Delhi, is lined with institutes for JEE and NEET. Laxmi Nagar in the east is where commerce and chartered accountancy students go. Mukherjee Nagar in the north and Old Rajinder Nagar in the centre hold the civil services crowd, one leaning Hindi medium and the other English. Any Delhi teenager can name these places without looking them up.

A coaching batch and a home tutor do different jobs. The batch sets a pace and covers a syllabus for a room. The tutor at home works on the four chapters one particular student stopped understanding in September, which the batch has long since passed. Most Delhi families who use both are not choosing between them; they are using the second to keep the first from leaving their child behind.

There is also a plain arithmetic of hours. A batch across the city can cost ninety minutes of travel on a weekday evening, and in the board months those minutes come out of study time. A tutor who reaches your colony returns them.

• Kalu Sarai near IIT Delhi is the engineering and medical coaching lane
• Laxmi Nagar draws commerce and chartered accountancy students
• Mukherjee Nagar and Old Rajinder Nagar are the civil services clusters

Delhi was reorganised into thirteen revenue districts on 1 January 2026, up from eleven, with the boundaries lined up against the municipal zones. Useful for paperwork, and no help at all when you are asking whether a tutor can reach Vikaspuri by half past five. For that, only two things matter: where the tutor lives and what the road is doing at that hour.

The metro carries a good deal of this. The Blue Line runs from Dwarka Sector 21 across the city through Janakpuri, Rajouri Garden and Karol Bagh, then on to Laxmi Nagar, Preet Vihar and Mayur Vihar in the east. The Yellow Line links Samaypur Badli and the university stations at GTB Nagar and Vishwavidyalaya with Hauz Khas, Malviya Nagar and Saket in the south. The Red Line runs from Rithala through Rohini to Shahdara and Dilshad Garden. A tutor on one of these lines can hold slots across several localities in a week; a tutor who has to cross the city by road usually cannot.

The practical advice is to ask for a tutor from your own side of Delhi and to fix the same days and the same hour every week. A slot that moves gets dropped first when traffic, a wedding or a bad air day intervenes.

• Ask for a tutor from your own part of the city, and the travel stops being a problem
• Fix the same days and hour each week; a floating slot is the first to be cancelled
• For a cross-city tutor you really want, run those lessons online

Hindi is the first official language of the National Capital Territory, and under the Delhi Official Language Act, 2000, Punjabi and Urdu are its second official languages. Homes here run in all of them and in English, often in the same conversation, and a child can be schooled in one language while thinking in another.

That shows up in tuition more than people expect. A Class 10 student may read the science textbook in English and understand a chapter only when somebody explains it in Hindi; a Class 12 commerce student may want the terms in English because the paper uses them. The examinations themselves vary: the CM SHRI Class 6 admission paper in 2026 was bilingual, while the Class 9 and Class 11 papers were set in English only.

So say plainly which language you want the lesson taught in, and whether you want the technical terms kept in English. It is a small line in a request and it saves a trial lesson from going to waste.

• Hindi is the first official language; Punjabi and Urdu are the second official languages
• Say which language the lesson should be taught in when you write to us
• Terms in English and explanation in Hindi is a normal, workable request