31 October 2016
Teachers should focus all their efforts on teaching, and not be burdened with distractions like administrative duties, leading student co-curricular activities, and committee work.
All these extra tasks contribute significantly to longer working hours and add a great deal of stress on educators who have to juggle the needs of students with expectations of parents and at the same time deliver quality lessons.
An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development survey in 2014 found that teachers here clock an average of 48 hours a week, 10 hours more than the global average. The results also showed that they spent almost twice the amount of time on marking and administrative work as their peers overseas.
Singapore’s teaching force at public schools has increased substantially over the years, but there has been no improvement in teaching hours. More should be done to assist teachers like hiring administrative staff to help with logistics and IT tasks.