There is no single number, and an academy that gives you one is guessing about your child. What decides it is how many days a week your child attends, what age they start, and how many lessons get missed. A child doing five days a week finishes far sooner than one doing two, and that difference is larger than any difference between teachers.
Why nobody can tell you a date on day one
Parents ask this on the first call and they deserve a straight answer, so here it is: we do not know yet, and neither does anyone else. Qaida is not a course with a fixed number of pages a child must sit through. It is a set of skills, and a child moves on from each one when the sound is right, not when the week ends.
What we can tell you on day one is what the pace depends on. After three or four weeks your teacher can give you a real estimate, because by then she has seen how fast your child picks up new letters and where they slow down.
The four things that actually change the answer
Days a week
The biggest factor by far. Five short lessons a week beat two long ones, because reading is a habit and a habit needs repetition, not duration.
Starting age
A four-and-a-half year old needs longer on the letters than a nine year old, because the hand and the ear are both younger. The older child catches up quickly.
Missed lessons
A child who misses one lesson a week is not doing four days, they are doing three and re-reading the last one. This is the quiet reason Qaida stretches.
Practice at home
Five minutes a day of reading yesterday's line out loud changes the pace more than any change of teacher. It does not need a parent who reads Arabic.
What a realistic plan looks like
Rather than a finish date, ask your teacher for the next milestone. Letters with their sounds, then joined letters, then short vowels, then the rules that come with them. Each one is visible to you as a parent, even if you cannot read Arabic yourself, because you can hear your child reading it.
- Ask the teacher at the end of each month which stage your child is on.
- Ask what the next stage is and roughly how many lessons it usually takes.
- If the same page is being repeated for weeks, ask why. There is often a good reason, and you are entitled to hear it.
- Do not move a child on to the Quran because a date has arrived. A shaky Qaida turns into a shaky recitation for years.
Related
How to teach Noorani Qaida to young children
Where to start with a four or five year old.
Noorani Qaida lesson 1
What the first lesson actually covers.
Noorani Qaida course
The course page, with what each stage covers.