Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors

4 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Education in each year for the past five years, what is the respective breakdown on the median and average ratio of full-time trained and untrained school counsellors to students in primary schools and secondary schools.

The Minister of State for Education (Ms Gan Siow Huang) (for the Minister for Education): Mr Speaker, all schools are resourced with one or two trained school counsellors depending on the school's counselling needs. Prior to their formal training at the National Institute of Education, untrained school counsellors are attached to schools to learn from experienced school counsellors but will not be involved in actual counselling work. Beside school counsellors, students are also supported by a network of teacher-counsellors, flexi-adjunct school counsellors, peer supporters and community resources such as Response, Early Assessment and Intervention for Community Mental Health teams and Family Service Centres.

Mr Speaker: Mr Louis Ng.

Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): Thank you, Sir. And I thank the Minister of State for the reply. I have seen the good and important work our school counsellors do, but I think they need some help, they are severely understaffed. Could I ask the Minister of State whether we are planning to increase the number of trained school counsellors in school? What is the ideal number and perhaps what is the timeframe for this increase?

Ms Gan Siow Huang: As I mentioned earlier on, all our Primary school, Secondary school, Junior College (JC) and Centralised Institutes (CI) schools are resource with one or two school counsellors. And in total, we have about 410 school counsellors deployed in our schools currently.

Hon Member Louis Ng has mentioned that this might not be a sufficient number. Actually, our schools can also engage flexi-adjunct school counsellors to supplement their short-term manpower needs and this is at the discretion of the school leaders and management. Overall, about 120 flexi-adjunct school counsellors are engaged in our schools. MOE has also provided further training to over 700 teachers, who are then deployed as teacher-counsellors in our schools to work alongside the school counsellors.

Currently, there are about two to three teacher-counsellors in each school and we aim to increase the number of teacher-counsellors to over 1,000 over the next few years. I hope the hon Member and Members in this Chamber take a more holistic approach towards supporting students with counselling needs. The load cannot fall fully on the school counsellors. Instead, we need to look wider at the community support within the school – fellow students, teachers, adjunct school counsellors and outside of the schools, the community partners. Our interest must be to provide adequate and effective support to our students.

Mr Speaker: Mr Louis Ng.

Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang: Thank you, Sir. Just a further clarification. We talked about the teacher-counsellors, but I think we agreed that teachers are really quite overworked. I just spent the weekend with the Singapore Teachers' Union talking about the workload and their concerns. Now you are asking to do counselling work as well. And that is why the clarification really is on whether we can increase the support to school counsellors, separate from teacher-counsellors, so teachers can focus on teaching and school counsellors can help the students who really do need that help quite desperately.

Ms Gan Siow Huang: We recognise that counselling work is demanding and teacher-counsellors have to balance their teaching and counselling workload. Schools does have the flexibility to reduce teaching or CCA duties for teacher-counsellors to provide them more time to spend with their students if they need to. And training for teacher-counsellors also has been enhanced to equip them not only to support their students' well-being, but also better manage their own well-being. We do that for the school counsellors too. Self-care is also important for the counsellors.