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Parliamentary Replies - 18 Apr 2005
Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Mdm Ho Geok Choo, MP for West Coast GRC
Question
To ask the Minister for Education (a) if he will update the House on the responsibilities and role of teacher-assistants vis-a-vis teachers; (b) what is the ratio of teacher-assistants to teachers; and (c) what formal qualifications do teacher-assistants have and what training do they go through.
Response
Roles & Responsibilities of Teacher Aides 1. Schools hire teacher assistants or teacher-aides to increase their capacity and supports teachers in their tasks. The teacher-aides may be deployed to relieve teachers of administrative and non-professional duties. They can also help teachers in classroom management, so that the teachers can focus on teaching or adopt more student-centred strategies.
2. While teacher-aides are deployed to support teachers, teachers remain responsible for the planning and delivery of lessons and school activities. Unlike relief teachers, the teacher-aide cannot stand-in for teachers in the conduct of teaching and instructional duties.
Employment of Teacher Aides 3. As the circumstances and needs of schools differ, we have given schools the autonomy to engage relief teachers or support services such as teacher-aides. These services can be paid from the manpower grant that the Ministry allocates to each school. This year, we increased the manpower grant to allow schools greater flexibility and capacity to support our teachers. We understand that to date, around 60 schools have engaged teacher-aides.
4. Schools will ensure that the teacher-aides they hire have relevant skills and qualifications for the tasks they are assigned to. It all depends on what they are hired to do. Based on feedback from schools, teacher-aides generally have at least a GCE “O” level certificate, and some have completed tertiary education. In addition, they are given some foundational training by the manpower agencies who recruit them. For example, EduCare by Singapore Teacher’s
MALAY LANGUAGE BEYOND TOP 5% NON-MALAY
Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Mr Chiam See Tong, MP for Potong Pasir
Question
To ask the Minister of Education whether the Government intends to extend the teaching of the Malay Language beyond the five percent top non-Malay students who wish to study the language.
Response
1. Under the Malay (Special Programme) [MSP], Malay is currently available as a third language to non-Malay students who are within the top 30 % of the PSLE cohort, if they also do well in Mother Tongue and English[1]. Over 640 students currently offer MSP at the MOE Language Centre in Bishan.
2. To encourage more non-Malay students to offer MSP, MOE has decided and announced[2] that we are lifting the current criteria so that students may offer Malay as a third language as long as they have the interest and inclination. Students will be able to do so at the MOE Language Centre from 2007 onwards. Schools that have the resources can offer MSP within their schools this year[3].
3. MOE is also increasing its teacher resources to allow MSP to be provided in more schools and centres, where there is a critical mass of interested students.
4. Many of our schools are also offering conversational Malay lessons to their students. MOE is encouraging more schools to do so, and is looking into how they can be supported.
[1]They should be the top 10% of PSLE cohort or are within the 11-30% band in PSLE with an A* in Mother Tongue Language (MTL) or Distinction in Higher MTL and at least an A in English. [2]This was first announced in Sep 2004. [3]
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