Workforce
Stressed to impress
The pressure-cooker lives of Singapore’ s teachers.
By Rodney King
Twelve-hour days and big classes are realities that Singapore’ s teachers face daily. Such conditions create stressful work environments which impede their capacity to live up to their global reputation for teaching excellence. They are usually too exhausted to be the classroom innovators they are often portrayed as, in what is regarded as one of the world’ s best education systems.
But you would not know this from the glowing reports issued by Western think tanks. Their consensus is that Singapore’ s teachers are central to the city-state’ s‘ first class’ education system, at least as defined by global student performance rankings.
Singapore’ s success in PISA and TIMSS tests is well known. Its teachers are seen as the key to this by bodies like the New York-based Asia Society( AS). To them, the country“ has developed a comprehensive system for selecting, training, compensating and developing teachers and principals”.
Similar views were expressed by the Aspen Institute in a report that depicted
Singapore as a model for teacher development and lauded its superior teacher-training methods.
Australia’ s Grattan Institute praised the Singaporean( and East Asian) education systems’ focus on“ the creation of a strong culture of teacher education, research collaboration, mentoring, feedback and sustained professional development”.
Certainly, Singapore’ s teachers come from the top third of secondary school graduates. They receive two years of thorough teacher training at the country’ s National Institute of Education, where they are paid a stipend of 60 per cent of a regular teacher’ s salary.
Singapore’ s teachers are clearly well chosen and trained to fulfil their exalted global reputation. But laudatory foreign reports praising their selection and preparation display no awareness of the often extreme and demoralising pressures they must endure while working at Ministry of Education( MOE) schools. Such pressures cripple their effectiveness as teachers.
LONG HOURS Along with 12-hour days, Singapore’ s teachers must cope with classes of up to 40 students, imposing exhausting teaching burdens on them.
According to a Teaching and Learning International Survey( TALIS), Singapore’ s teachers work an average of 47.8 hours a week. This is 9.5 hours more than the TALIS survey’ s average of 38.3 hours, based on 34 countries surveyed. Australia recorded 42.7 hours, and Finland 31.6. But TALIS seems to have under-estimated the working hours of Singapore’ s teachers.
This became apparent from a public discussion in the local media, sparked by the TALIS report.
Ten Singaporean teachers interviewed by The Straits Times dismissed the report, saying it“ did not reflect their typical day”. They said school days would start as early as 6am and end 10 – 12 hours later – equating to up to 60 hours a week.
The paper described the common case of a primary school teacher rising at 5am every weekday and leaving home at 6am to reach school at 7am for‘ guard duty’ to oversee students arriving early. After remedial lessons, extracurricular activities and administrative duties, he would return home at 8pm, where more schoolwork awaited him.
Numerous posts by former and current Singaporean teachers on local websites report similar crushing workloads.
BIG CLASSES Besides long hours, most MOE teachers must often handle 40-student classes. By comparison, recent OECD public school class averages are 21.3 students for primary schools, and 23.3 for lowersecondary schools. Australia’ s primary and lower-secondary school averages are 23.2 and 22.8 respectively.
Large classes greatly hamper Singaporean teachers’ capacity to teach as well as they want. As Deborah Chai, a Singaporean teacher who resigned after 15 years, told The Online Citizen:“ I like a smaller class. Forty is really crazy. You cannot give quality teaching to 40 kids.”
Not surprisingly, the MOE faces low teacher morale and high resignation rates. In October 2016, The Straits Times reported that 5000 teachers had left the profession in the previous five years. Long hours, huge classes and overly demanding parents( desperate to ensure their children score well in Singapore’ s highly competitive education system) were the main reasons they quit. This was despite past efforts by the MOE to induce them to stay, including pay rises of 4 – 9 per cent in August 2015.
None of this is ever mentioned in the laudatory reports on the excellence of Singapore’ s teachers. ■
Rodney King is a former Singaporebased writer and journalist. His most recent book is Singapore’ s Education System, Myth and Reality.
28 | educationreview. com. au