Addressing Teachers' Stress Levels and Supporting Their Mental Well-being

2 Dr Wan Rizal asked the Minister for Education what additional measures are being considered to address the high stress levels reported by teachers in the recent OECD TALIS 2024 study, particularly regarding support for their mental health and well-being.

3 Mr Shawn Loh asked the Minister for Education given the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey 2024 finding that only 12% of teachers are aged under 30, with 40% of this group intending to leave within the next five years (a) whether the low proportion of younger teachers is an intended policy outcome; and (b) how are beginning teachers supported to manage the increasing demands of this noble profession.

4 Ms Valerie Lee asked the Minister for Education (a) whether the Ministry is taking any specific steps to further reduce non-instructional duties for teachers, especially marking and administrative work; and (b) whether the Ministry will consider employing full-time employees to assist teachers in communications and event management, amongst other duties, in order to allow teachers to focus on teaching and coaching our children.

5 Ms Hany Soh asked the Minister for Education in light of the findings by the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2024 dated 7 October 2025 about the increasing complexity of the teaching profession, what are the specific aspects of the teaching profession in Singapore identified by the Ministry with potential for immediate improvement, especially for teachers' welfare.

The Minister for Education (Mr Desmond Lee): Mr Speaker, my response will address the questions raised by Members to understand the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2024 findings and the current support systems and measures in place to manage teacher workload and well-being. May I have Mr Speaker's permission to answer oral Question Nos 2 to 5 and written Questions Nos 45 to 47 on today's Order Paper?

Mr Speaker: Please proceed.

Mr Desmond Lee: Thank you, Sir. My response will also cover related oral and written Parliamentary Questions set down for today and subsequent Sittings.

Sir, let me begin by affirming what our teachers believe in – that teaching is, at its heart, a profoundly human endeavour. A teacher's responsibility is significant, as it involves nurturing students and shaping their futures. Our teachers take great pride in their work and demonstrate a strong sense of professionalism and dedication.

Our educators often go far beyond their formal duties because they see their students' growth and well-being as their responsibility. While we appreciate and applaud their passion, we also want to ensure that such commitment does not result in unsustainable workload for our teachers.

Members asked about the teachers' role and how the Ministry intends to support teachers with their non-teaching workload. Members also asked about the use of independent or externally verified studies to validate reported teacher workload hours and if the Ministry conducts regular checks of teacher workload.

We recognise that teaching, like many professions, comes with its own set of challenges and stressors. The 2024 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), which is a study run independently by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), found that Singapore teachers reported longer working hours per week compared to the OECD average. These longer hours are reported because Singapore teachers spend their time differently from many of their OECD peers. While classroom teaching hours are shorter, our teachers spend time on other important activities such as lesson preparation, co-curricular activities (CCAs) and professional development. These activities are critical to their effectiveness in providing holistic education for our students.

TALIS, being the largest international teacher survey, is a useful benchmarking tool, but it has its limitations. It is conducted once every six years and surveys a representative sample of only our lower-secondary teachers. In contrast, the Ministry of Education (MOE) internally monitors the workload of our teachers more regularly – across all grade levels: primary, secondary, junior college and centralised institute – through surveys, polls and various forms of staff engagement. This allows us to track closely and develop a more holistic understanding of teacher workload trends and issues, so that we can adjust our policies and programmes, as necessary. As we had said in a written Parliamentary Question reply to this House on 14 October this year, our data shows that, over the years, teacher workload has remained stable in terms of total hours, at an average of 53 hours. However, we recognise that the complexity of a teacher's work has increased over the years.

Members asked how MOE aims to address the longer working hours and stresses faced by our teachers. MOE adopts a range of measures to manage teachers' workload and to support their well-being, which we review regularly. First, MOE's Teacher Work Management Framework provides our school leaders with a common set of principles and measures to guide equitable workload allocation, considering teachers' competencies and preferences. It emphasises transparency, trust and open communication in workload deployment. This is reviewed regularly in response to new developments.

Second, technology and artificial intelligence (AI) innovation. MOE is tapping on AI to help teachers work more efficiently and effectively. New AI and other tech tools in the Singapore Student Learning Space (SLS) for example, support teachers to plan lessons, as well as to mark, provide customised feedback and analyse students' responses. Digital platforms, like Parents Gateway, have reduced time spent on administrative tasks, such as collecting consent forms and medical certificates. And while Singapore has one of the highest adoption rates among OECD education systems for using AI, we recognise that it does not immediately translate to reduced work hours. Teachers need time to be trained to use these tools, be comfortable using them and to fully integrate these tools into their work practices.

Third, enhanced staffing support. On average, each school has about 85 teachers. In addition, each school is resourced with a team of allied educators performing functions, such as counselling and working with students with special educational needs. All schools have a dedicated administrative team overseeing general administrative matters, procurement, financial operations and logistics support. We have been increasing such support. Over the last 10 years, we have doubled the number of allied educators across all schools, from about 800 to 1,600, and also increased the number of administrative staff in each school, from six then, to around nine today. Furthermore, schools have the flexibility to procure manpower services such as coaches, CCA administrators and allied support for student well-being; as well as vendors to assist with administrative work, events management and student programmes. We will continue to review the number of non-teaching staff needed in schools to effectively support our teachers and our students.

Fourth, system-level adjustments. When we introduce new policies and initiatives, or make policy changes, it increases workload for a season, as schools and teachers need to be briefed, trained and need time to adjust. Good change management is therefore key. MOE has given schools greater flexibility to pace the implementation of new system-wide initiatives, including deferring them if necessary, in order to manage staff workload. Hence, schools could decide when they would implement major changes, such as Full Subject-Based Banding as well as the EdTech Masterplan 2030.

Fifth, protected time policies. All schools provide protected vacation time during school holidays to ensure that our teachers can rest and recharge. Across the four blocks of school holidays, teachers can get around six to seven weeks of protected time and can take their vacation leave beyond the protected time, if they do not have any work in school. MOE also refreshed the School-Home Partnership guidelines at the end of 2024 to avoid parent-staff communication after school hours, except for critical emergencies. It also states clearly that teachers do not need to give their personal mobile phone numbers to parents and students. This is to minimise the blurring of lines between work and personal time.

Sixth, flexible work arrangements (FWAs). Since 2022, MOE has also provided guidelines on FWA for School-based Officers, while maintaining the duty of care towards our students. These include allowing teachers to report later at the start of the school day or leaving earlier before the end of the school day if they have no lessons or duties. Teachers are also allowed to work from home on a day where they have no classes or duties requiring their presence in school. Teachers who are unable to take on the full workload can apply for part-time working arrangements.

Seventh, well-being support. All schools have Staff Well-being Committees that are resourced with Staff Welfare Funds. Teachers have access to a range of resources such as well-being workshops, talks, webinars and online self-care materials. If they have well-being concerns, they are encouraged to raise them with their supervisors, school leaders or superintendents. They also have access to peer support, such as their school's wellness ambassadors and to free professional counselling through MOE's in-house counsellors or the whole-of-Government Employee Wellness Programme.

Members asked if the reduction of workload will be a key priority with key performance indicators set, and how well-being data informs staffing, performance evaluation and retention policies. MOE takes a holistic approach to monitoring teacher well-being rather than using singular metrics like work hours. We regularly track a range of indicators including job satisfaction, retention rates and stress levels and also, engage with MOE teachers' unions to get feedback and suggestions. This approach allows us to ensure timely interventions to support teacher well-being. Apart from broad-based measures to support the profession, when we receive school-specific feedback, we will also implement targeted measures to address these issues in those schools.

We are encouraged by the commitment shown by our teachers over the years, in spite of the growing complexity of the role. The mean annual resignation rates of teachers have remained stable at around 2% to 3% over the past few decades. TALIS 2024 also found that many of our teachers felt valued by society and see teaching as an attractive career choice. Based on the results from MOE's staff engagement survey last year, teachers' perceptions of work-life balance support were comparable to those across the wider Public Service.

I thank Members of this House as well as members of the public, for their concern for our educators. Indeed, our individual and collective attitude towards educators will determine whether we can continue to attract and retain good educators.

Beyond MOE and our schools, parents and other stakeholders also play an important role in supporting our teachers' well-being. By working collaboratively with schools, respecting educators and maintaining realistic expectations about the responsibilities of teachers, parents can also help create an environment where our teachers can focus on what they do best – educating and nurturing our children.

I would like to encourage parents and in fact, all of us to recognise and appreciate our educators who dedicate themselves daily to nurture young minds. As a society, let us cherish our educators' contributions each and every day. For when we honour those who teach our children, we strengthen the foundation upon which our nation's progress rests.

Let me close by saying this: having highly professional and caring educators, who are deeply committed to shaping the lives of our children and youths, is one of Singapore's reservoirs of strength. I thank all our teachers and allied educators for the good work you have done – seen and unseen. And I thank all parents and members of the public for your support for our schools and our teachers. We appreciate our teachers and we are committed to working with you to nurture and guide our next generation.

Mr Speaker: Dr Wan Rizal.

Dr Wan Rizal (Jalan Besar): Mr Speaker, I would like to get your permission to ask beyond two supplementary questions, because I have asked quite a number of questions.

Mr Speaker: Yes. Go ahead, but keep it short.

Dr Wan Rizal: Thank you, Sir. So, I want to first appreciate the Minister for sharing the efforts taken by the Ministry to protect our teachers, for their well-being, and of course, how they have been treated in schools all this while. I have gotten a number of on-the-ground feedback, including those with dialogues through the Singapore Teachers' Union (STU), where I am an advisor for, and we have had very good conversations about how we want to improve teachers' well-being and how we can protect them further.

And while many support and welcome the efforts done by the Ministry, one pain point that keeps cropping up is the workload. And we have heard from Minister on how we have continued to monitor. But they have shared progressively that, although things have changed, it is similar still, because you move the pieces around, but the plate is still as much. So, there are some concerns, and I would like to ask further.

The Minister talked earlier about how he has done some research and we know OECD's survey is not ours, but we have continually done more, to check on our teachers. Has the Ministry conducted any recent workload audits, so that we can pinpoint exactly where this pressure of workload really comes from? They have mentioned that the bulk is the non-teaching part, so can we work on something to maybe reduce that further?

The Minister also mentioned the use of AI, which I believe has helped teachers a lot, but it has also added a layer of complexity to how they do things. And I wonder whether this could also be considered in us trying to reduce the workload.

Going forward, can we explore a white space, where we put a fixed guideline throughout the different schools to protect core teaching time. The Minister mentioned earlier, they teach a certain amount of hours, but it is the bulk of whatever happens after that, that is the one that really needs some protection. And I hope that the Minister could find some model to help them in that regard.

I think the STU has certain considerations too, so I think it is wonderful if we can work further on this.

And the Minister mentioned earlier how we have decentralised, such that different schools will have different approaches. I think that is necessary, given the demographics of the different schools. But would you consider in this regard certain schools with slightly different needs? For example, they have a higher number of need for counselling, they need more para educators to be on board. Would the Ministry consider giving some schools a lot more support in this regard?

So, I thank the Minister again, for sharing the efforts in protecting teachers' well-being and I want to appreciate the teachers too. We are coming towards the end of the year and I want to appreciate the good work they have done over the whole year.

Mr Desmond Lee: I thank the Member for his series of questions, which reflects his deep engagement with the union, with educators and with members of the public on the state of teaching in Singapore. Indeed, as I said, we do not just rely on TALIS, which is an OECD study. We have our own internal reviews on a regular basis on a whole variety of issues, including teacher workload, and the various measures that were outlined earlier – and I would not repeat all of them – are in reality, a response to the identified areas of workload which we can moderate or adjust.

So, some of it involves hiring more and we have announced in July this year that we are going to ramp up the recruitment of teachers. I mentioned that over the years we have moved some responsibilities away from teachers towards allied educators, like counsellors, special educational needs (SEN) officers, administrators, vendors and others. We have given schools resources to be able to bring in more vendors, if necessary, to help them to organise the activities.

So, those are the measures that are in response to a deeper understanding of the issues that the teachers face. And we are committed to continue this work and continue to implement new measures to help to allow our teachers that space to teach.

I would say that teaching today, if you ask any teacher, is a lot more holistic. It is not just about in-classroom teaching of a core subject or a hard subject. Even in the teaching of a hard subject, I think the Member will recognise that we are infusing 21st Century Competencies through the way that the teaching is carried out – through field trips, through studies, in subjects where appropriate, we infuse even values education, and Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) into some of these subjects.

And so, teaching being more holistic, is no longer just found in the classroom, but also in CCA and CCE, and in a whole range of other activities that enable our teachers to mould and nurture our students holistically – not just cognitively, but affectively, in terms of their emotional well-being, in terms of their skillsets, in terms of their executive functioning, in terms of their core values that help them to navigate society and the uncertain future world.

That is one. And of course, by helping our teachers with tools to prepare their material – standardised material in SLS – so they do not always have to prepare their own material, they can use some of that and adjust. We also provide AI tools, not just administratively to help them with administrative workload, but also to help them augment their teaching, augment their marking, augment their ability to give feedback to their students.

I just want to refer the Member back again to the various measures I articulated earlier. The Member asked whether we give our schools more resources based on needs. I think, absolutely. There was a Parliamentary Question sometime back where Members asked if schools can get more allied educators based on the profile of their students. For example, if they need more SEN officers or more counsellors, we are able to redeploy the existing pool and steer them towards schools that may have a greater need, whether secular or for a season.

Mr Speaker: I see many hands. I am only going to call Members who have filed questions on this. So, for those who did not, you do not need to raise your hands. Mr Shawn Loh.

Mr Shawn Loh (Jalan Besar): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My supplementary questions will be shorter than Dr Wan Rizal's.

Mr Speaker: I would appreciate that. Dr Wan's supplementary questions were pretty long.

Mr Shawn Loh: Thank you. I thank the Minister for Education for his response, and I also want to declare that I am the new advisor to the STU, as well as the Education Services Union.

It is a common refrain from many teachers that one hour in the classroom is more tiring than one hour in the office. I would venture to extend that to say that one hour in the classroom is much more tiring than one hour in Parliament. And that is important. Because it is very concerning when TALIS, not just notes that teachers on average work 47 hours a week, but that the number has not gone down over the last two seasons of the survey over the last decade. Whereas across Singapore, for full-time workers, the average hours worked went down from about 47 hours to about 44 hours. So, we should all be rightfully concerned about our teachers.

To that end, I have two supplementary questions. The first one is for beginning teachers. For beginning teachers, the survey noted that the proportion of teachers was low and that many were intending to leave. So, my question to the Minister is whether the low proportion is a feature of MOE's hiring policy. Is it because it is about low recruitment or is it about high attrition? And if it is the latter, what is the Ministry doing about it?

The second and last question is about non-teaching workload. I fully agree with the Minister that non-teaching workload that leads to educational outcomes are important. Our teachers should do that, like for CCAs. Because teachers do not just teach, they educate. But there are also non-teaching workloads that do not necessarily lead directly to educational outcomes – procurement, for example, and other administrative work. It seems like a perennial bugbear, notwithstanding the Minister's assurance, that the amount of resources to each school has gone up. I would like to ask the Minister, why is this so? Is it because the workload has gone up more than the resources given to the schools?

Mr Desmond Lee: I thank the Member for his questions and for his concern for our teachers. I said earlier in my speech that both TALIS, as well as our surveys show that while teachers' workload is high – it is indeed so and working hours are long – they have been stable over the past number of years, and we are working hard to focus our teachers' precious time on teaching holistically. Where possible, we help them to be more productive and effective, help them to shed some of the administrative tasks and what the Member calls, non-core teaching functions to allied educators and others. So, that work continues.

So, why is it that the number of working hours remains at this level and remain stable over the past number of years? I think Members will also need to look at the context. Over the past few years, we have made a number of policy changes. Teaching, as I said today, is a lot more holistic. There is a lot more teaching beyond the classroom. There is CCA, through which we teach leadership, sportsmanship, empathy and so on, the 21st Century Competencies. And in short, we have made many education-related moves over the years to strengthen our education system.

So, Full Subject-Based Banding only recently kicked in and there are a lot of things to be done in order to allow our students at secondary level to be able to learn at their pace. Indeed, it creates more work, but one which teachers recognise benefits our students.

We implemented an EdTech Masterplan 2030 to help support our teachers and our students in learning using technology. Not just learning using technology, but learning with technology. We have been talking about AI in education as well, so that will of course, create additional workload in terms of briefing, understanding, tinkering, learning, workshopping, practising, mastering and then we start to reap the results.

We made changes to the PSLE system. That, of course, creates additional work, but again for a purpose that supports the education system.

We made changes to refresh our 21st Century Competencies and how it is infused into our lesson plans and in our curriculum and in holistic education. That, of course, also requires all our schools, all our teachers and all our departments, not just in the headquarters (HQ), but particularly in our schools, to make changes.

And I can go on and on about all these things that have been done over the last few years that will increase the workload for a season, or some may also increase workload secularly. This is because education is more holistic and our teachers also have to contend with a changing demographic of parents and the different aspirations of our students.

So, all in, being able to keep workload at that level, despite doing all these important things, I think is a reflection of how these measures have worked. But we need to do more in order to make further improvements to the workload and stress on our teachers.

On beginning teachers, the Member asked why the proportion of beginning teachers has fallen through the TALIS report; he cites that. Well, in 2018 to 2024, with falling cohorts and a maturing workforce, we had reduced recruitment to some 650 to 700 teachers a year, in order to fill in the gaps in certain subjects and to replace retiring teachers. But in July this year, we announced that we will ramp up recruitment of teachers going forward to some 1,000 teachers or more per year.

Mr Speaker: Ms Valerie Lee.

Ms Valerie Lee (Pasir Ris-Changi): I thank the Minister. I have two supplementary questions. Has the Ministry actively conducted studies on other countries on how they manage this topic of time management for teachers? If so, which countries are they, and have there been anything that is implemented in Singapore? The second question is, what targeted initiatives are there being planned to reduce teacher attrition rates, particularly among our younger educators who may feel overwhelmed by workload and pressure?

Mr Desmond Lee: Through TALIS, we have a very useful comprehensive teacher survey study across a large number of OECD countries and that is a very useful benchmarking tool. It is not just survey results, but they also go into some qualitative understanding of each jurisdiction. That, of course, complements our comparative study of other jurisdictions to continually improve. So, that is the response to her first question.

To the Member's second question about beginning teachers' attrition, we support them through inductions, through mentoring in the first few years, through more supportive environments in school culture, focusing on professional development to enable our beginning teachers to be able to navigate, what will inevitably be a steep learning curve in teaching and in fact, in all professions.

We also need to accommodate, adjust and respond to a changing demographic with different aspirations of work and life, and so, in that regard, having more flexible work arrangements, including part-time teaching, having various options for teachers to adjust their school day, specific to their own responsibilities and specific to the school environment. I mentioned quite a number of them earlier, for example, coming to school a little later, if there is nothing right up in the morning, leaving once their teaching and other duties are done, and so on. So, we will continue to find ways to make sure that our scheme of service continues to respond to a changing demographic.

Mr Speaker: Ms Hany Soh.

Ms Hany Soh (Marsiling-Yew Tee): Thank you, Speaker. The TALIS findings underscore our Singapore teaching profession as innovative and respected, yet burdened by the demands that could potentially erode long-term sustainability, particularly our early career educators. In this aspect, I have three supplementary questions for the Minister.

First, do teachers appraisal and progression factor in non-teaching duties, such as projects and CCAs? The second supplementary question concerns whether the Ministry has sought teachers' feedback on the demands that they face from students' parents and whether the situation has improved with the introduction of the Parents Gateway communication platform, as shared by the Minister earlier? And finally, I am not sure if I caught it, in the various measures that the Minister shared earlier, in relation to supporting the young, budding teachers, whether we are prepared to consider to include a scheme like a mentorship between senior and more junior teachers, as a form of buddy system, encouraging and providing the necessary support and guidance to the young educators?

Mr Desmond Lee: I think I will address the Member's third question first. I did mention earlier that mentoring, on top of induction programmes and other professional development programmes, are in place for beginning teachers – or what she mentions as novice teachers.

In response to her first question on appraisal, we do take into account the teachers' holistic work as well as performance – teaching, CCAs, projects and so on.

In terms of whether we do surveys of teachers or engage teachers to better understand the relationship between them and parents, the answer is yes – through dialogues, through feedback from STU and other teachers' unions, through our well-being surveys, we get a better understanding of the changing demographic of parents today and their expectations of their children and teachers in school and out of school.

Hence, as a result, you see changes such as the Parents Gateway, implemented a number of years ago, School-Home Partnership as well as MOE's Engagement Charter, which sets out clearer boundaries and expectations, and draws clearer lines between teachers and parents – so that we can have a good productive, holistic relationship and partnership for the benefit of our children.

Mr Speaker: Mr Kenneth Tiong, I know you have filed a Parliamentary Question for this tomorrow.

Mr Kenneth Tiong Boon Kiat (Aljunied): Thank you, Speaker. Two supplementary questions for the Minister. Firstly, what are MOE's target operational outcomes for AI adoption? Surely, the Ministry must have a direction or goals, whether it is fewer hours, better allocation of time from administrative duties to teaching, or something else. Without that, how do we measure whether AI adoption is achieving the desired outcomes?

The second supplementary question: the Minister said that the workload has been stable at 53 hours per week. Does MOE believe that this is sustainable in the long term? And if not, what is the target number of hours that MOE is working towards?

Mr Desmond Lee: I thank the Member for his questions on AI. I mentioned earlier that AI tools, once you introduce them, there is work created when you introduce AI tools. In fact, there is work created when you introduce any productivity tool. At the NIE70 conference, we also had AI experts from abroad who cautioned that when you introduce AI tools, there is hidden work that is created. Some of it is seasonal. Some of it may be secular. But if these are tools that are productive in nature that help save effort, reduce time spent on certain things in order for the teacher or the worker to be able to do more higher value-added things and divert the time to things that they feel are more important, then the necessary pre-condition is that one gets familiar, understands and then gradually masters and gets familiar with the tools, and then you start to reap the benefits.

So, there is a learning curve. There is an implementation curve and an operationalisation curve before we can reap the benefits. And it is still early days. We are infusing AI into teaching, not just as a productivity tool, but in order for us as an Education Service to be able to teach our children what is AI, teach them how to use AI, teach them or enable them to learn with AI, and also to learn beyond AI. So, all this does requires change management, over and on top of the School Cockpit and suite of tools, AI and tech in nature that enable our teachers to do more with limited time.

In terms of the workload, I mentioned in response to another Member earlier that the stability of our working hours – not that we crow about it; certainly, those are long hours and we need to continue to work collectively at it and I think, on both sides of this House, we all recognise and appreciate our teachers putting in all this effort for the benefit of holistic education of our children – but there has been a whole series of education reforms and changes over the years. A number of measures I mentioned earlier have helped to moderate the increase in working hours. But we are at it, we keep at it and continue to roll out reviews and changes that will help to moderate our teachers' overall working hours and their work-life balance.

Mr Speaker: Dr Choo Pei Ling, I know you had a question for tomorrow's Sitting as well.

Dr Choo Pei Ling (Chua Chu Kang): I have three supplementary questions. One, as schools differ in size and profile, how does MOE ensure that requests for additional support staff, such as administrative assistants or counsellors, are prioritised fairly and matched to the unique needs of each school? Two, are best practices from schools that have successfully reduced teacher workload being shared so that other schools can learn and adopt these methods? Three, how are insights from these regular workload reviews translated into practical adjustments at the school level, so that teachers feel the impact directly in their day-to-day work?

Mr Desmond Lee: I thank the Member for her three questions. The first, I think I have addressed that in a reply to one of the Members earlier that, based on the specific needs and the profile of each school, if there are additional resource requirements, they can raise them to their superintendents, zonal directors and to HQ, and we will see how to provide support to help them address those needs.

The second is best practices. Certainly, through the Schools Division, our principals, school leaders and our superintendents share best practices, not just in terms of workload reducing measures, but also pedagogical and teaching methods as well. We have network communities of practice that enable our educators in different fields, as well as our administrators, to be able to share ideas and best practices with one another. So, collectively, we improve as a system.

And lastly, the Member, I believe, asked how we ensure that these measures are properly implemented. Again, there are a range of supervisory measures, but ultimately, we give our school leaders autonomy and discretion to apply these measures to address needs and circumstances in their institutions.

Mr Speaker: Mr Jackson Lam, did you raise your hand earlier? No. Okay, Dr Hamid Razak.

Dr Hamid Razak (West Coast-Jurong West): Thank you, Speaker. I really appreciate the Minister setting the boundaries for clearer parent-teacher communication. However, boundaries can only do so much when it comes to behavioural change. I am wondering if the Ministry would consider perhaps setting up frameworks to engage parents to set clearer communication guidelines as well as perhaps shared communication platforms, which parents can then engage with should they have concerns about their children? This is because practices may vary between teachers and that might incite some degree of peer influence in terms of responding to parents, especially with their own personal phones for teachers, and parents might have overt concerns about their children, which may also vary between parent groups. So, more than boundaries, my question is whether the Ministry has further measures or frameworks that can be useful to engage parents to enhance this parent-teacher communication?

Mr Desmond Lee: I thank the Member for his concern about the anxiety of parents as well as the stressors on our teachers. Indeed, parents are the first teachers of our children, and our teachers really work closely and seek to have a close partnership with our parents in order to ensure more holistic education of our children.

I mentioned earlier that we have an MOE Engagement Charter, together with the School-Home Partnership framework. It is not just an internal document, it is also shared, particularly with parents as well as with the public, so that we understand how to navigate that relationship. All of us are concerned about our children but we also need to enable our teachers to perform their tasks and to be able to support their children in the class.

And therefore, apart from these two guidelines and frameworks, we also have parent support groups. We have regular communication. It may vary from school to school, between school leaders, level heads with parents, either en masse, face to face, person to person, in a group, or virtually as well. So, these are ways that enable a constant relationship, a constant communication between our schools and our parents.

Mr Speaker: Ms Elysa Chen, I know, like Dr Hamid Razak, you also filed a Parliamentary Question for Thursday's Sitting. So, go ahead.

Ms Elysa Chen (Bishan-Toa Payoh): I did, thank you Speaker. I would like to thank the Minister also for acknowledging the increasing complexity of a teacher's work. And to follow up, I would like to ask the Minister what safeguards are in place to ensure that internal workload surveys capture the full range of non-teaching duties, including event planning, meetings and administrative work.

And second question: would MOE clarify whether teachers on the teaching track can achieve promotion to General Education Officer 5A and beyond, based solely on classroom teaching excellence, pedagogical innovation and student mentorship, without needing to chair committees or lead school-wide events and nationwide initiatives.

Last question: of the teachers promoted to senior teacher or lead teacher positions at the schools, what proportion held non-teaching administrative portfolios, such as committee chairmanships, non-subject Head of Department positions or Year Head roles prior to the appointments, as opposed to solely professional development portfolios?

Mr Desmond Lee: The Member asked three questions. For the second and third question, they are HR- and statistics-related. I would just encourage the Member to file a written Parliamentary Question and we will give her that data.

The Member's first question is about safeguards to ensure that our MOE surveys capture accurate data. We have a large teaching workforce – primary, secondary, junior college, centralised institute – and the surveys have a very high response rate. Something like more than 90% of our teachers respond because they know that if they give us accurate information, it will enable our policy-makers to better roll out measures that support them.

And so, to help do this, in our surveys, we have clear guidelines and instructions on how to itemise the workload for different kinds of work, both in classroom and outside classroom, pedagogical as well as administrative. We also provide worked examples that enable our teachers, particularly those who are doing surveys for the first time, to better understand what we are trying to capture. And of course, as with many surveys, there is also a catch-all – that means, anything else, please let us know so that we do not risk missing anything out. And of course, when you average it out, when you then look at it specifically, you then have a very good set of data that enable policy-makers to work.

Mr Speaker: We are moving on. We have already spent an hour and we are only at Question No 5.