24 Sep 2005

Title:Teaching applicants assessed in totality

1. Ms Li Gui Yue (“Why don’t we recruit local Chinese Language teachers?”, ZB Forum, 9/9) and Ms Zhang Mei Ning (“Are local gingers not hot enough?”, ZB Forum, 19/9) had raised the issue of recruiting local Chinese Language (CL) teachers instead of depending on foreign CL teachers.
2. The quality of candidates who apply to be a teacher is very important to the Ministry of Education (MOE).  MOE assesses the quality of applicants by reviewing their academic qualifications, and other personal attributes. The degree that a candidate possesses is an indication of the acquired content knowledge and the ability to learn new knowledge. In addition, teaching applicants are assessed based on their language proficiency, and other personal qualities, like adaptability and commitment that would enable them to be effective CL teachers.
3. The demand for CL teachers is greater than the local pool of qualified applicants.  Furthermore, many of our serving CL teachers are in their 50s.  As they retire, we will need younger officers to be recruited in their place.  Our strategy is to increase the pool of local CL teachers while supplementing with a small number of qualified foreign CL teachers.  Being native speakers of CL, teachers recruited from China make for effective CL teachers. They also introduce new perspectives and strategies in CL teaching here.
4. We wish to reassure Ms Li and Ms Zhang that the MOE welcomes local graduates who have the necessary aptitude and CL qualifications to join the teaching profession.  However, given the small number of students who study CL in our universities, the number we can recruit to teach CL is insufficient to meet the needs of our schools.  For example, there were about 60 local CL students who have graduated from the National University of Singapore in 2004, but only one third have since joined the teaching profession.
5. We have also recruited candidates possessing the Bachelor of Arts in Chinese Language and Literature programme jointly offered by UniSIM and Beijing Normal University.  This course is also one of the popular courses that our non-graduate CL teachers consider when they wish to pursue a CL degree.  Teachers who obtain this degree are considered for emplacement on a higher salary scale if they show good performance for a few years. This is to ensure that teachers demonstrate that they have benefited from their degree course.

Lu Cheng Yang
Director, Personnel
Ministry of Education