Parliamentary Replies
Relief Teaching
Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Mrs Josephine Teo, MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC
Question
To ask the Minister for Education (a) whether there is a shortage of qualified relief teachers; (b) how is the appointment of relief teachers managed; and (c) what steps are taken to ensure that the quality of teaching is maintained during periods of relief teaching that last for several months.
Response by Minister Ng Eng Hen
Schools use relief teachers mainly for short-term, ad-hoc vacancies of a few days or weeks, for example, when teachers go on short courses or are ill. While most relief teachers do not have formal teacher training, the minimum qualifications needed is 5 GCE ‘O’ level passes, including a pass in the English Language at 1 sitting. Schools can nominate their regular registered relief teachers to attend a 2-day training workshop on good teaching practices and classroom management.
Candidates interested in relief teaching positions need to apply to the Ministry of Education online. Schools can access MOE’s online registry to select relief teachers to meet their needs. There is currently a ready pool of 5000 relief teachers which schools can tap on. Schools monitor the conduct and performance of their relief teachers. Those who perform poorly are taken off MOE’s registry of relief teachers.
To fill longer temporary vacancies of a few months, for example, arising from teachers going on study or maternity leave, as well as shorter term school needs, MOE has provided each school with 10 Adjunct Teacher posts (AJT) partly for this purpose. Adjunct teachers are trained teachers who have opted to rejoin the teaching profession on a flexible-work basis. Adjunct teachers can either be engaged on a contract basis by MOE or on a casual basis by the schools. As of end May 2009, there were a total of 4568 adjunct teachers in MOE’s registry, out of which 2534 adjunct teachers were employed in our schools.
Schools can also tap on their internal pool of Allied Educators (Teaching & Learning) to meet short-term or ad-hoc staffing needs in their schools. We aim to deploy 5-7 Allied Educators (T&L) to each primary school and 6-8 to each secondary school by year 2015.