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Date: 20 Mar 96

Statement by the Minister for Education - Shaping up the Education Service for the 21st Century

Education is crucial to Singapore's continuing success . The Government has invested heavily to develop an outstanding education system for Singapore. School facilities today are much improved compared with 10 years ago, and much better than in many other countries. We will continue to invest in better schools and equip them with the latest educational technology

However, good infrastructure is not enough. The key to a good education system is people. We must have a team of dedicated and committed educators with the enthusiasm to energise our young, the teaching skills to give them a good education and the character to impart sound moral values.

It is therefore imperative that the Education Service has a good share of the nation's talent. We have already made several major changes to improve personnel management in the Education Service. In 1990, we formed the Education Service Commission. In 1995, we devolved authority in personnel management to Personnel Boards so that my Ministry can directly manage promotions and recruitment of educators. Last year, it carried out two mass promotion exercises to upgrade classroom teachers.

These measures have helped improve the attractiveness of the Service. But more needs to be done. The resignation rate among young officers on CPF is about 5% each year, higher than for older officers on pension. Many pensionable teachers will be reaching retirement age over the next 5-10 years. We must significantly improve the terms of the Education Service, to recruit and retain good officers in sufficient numbers.

An Education Service Review Committee (ESRC) comprising senior officers from MOE and PSD was set up recently to review and propose fundamental improvements to the Education Service. The Committee has identified three key problems:

	Firstly, the remuneration and status of Principals are not commensurate with their heavy responsibilities. Currently, the grade of a graduate Principal is pegged to Upper Timescale. In other services, this grade is meant for heads of organisations much smaller than a school. As professional and administrative head of a school, a Principal has typically to lead a team of 50 to 70 professionals to care for 1,500 to 2,000 pupils, and deal with all matters concerning the school. The grade of a graduate Principal should extend to Superscale levels.
	Secondly, promotional prospects in the Education Service are poor. The grade structure is too flat and there are too few promotional posts. The Service today has about 22,000 officers who make up nearly 40% of the Civil Service. But only 5% of the posts are Senior Education Officer (SEO) posts. These are the Principal, Vice-principal, Head of Department (HOD) in junior colleges and centralised institutes, and certain HQ appointments. In secondary and primary schools, HODs are banded with the teachers in the General Education Officer (GEO) grades. Long pay scales and very limited promotion prospects make it difficult to attract good recruits in sufficient numbers.
	Thirdly, new teachers are appointed to the Service only after they have spent one or two additional years at the National Institute of Education (NIE) for teacher training. While at the NIE, they receive much less than the remuneration received by their peers who are starting their careers in other services.

The Review Committee has recommended several changes to the Education Service to solve these three problems. The Government has accepted the recommendations.

A. Upgrading of Principals

Firstly, the establishment grade for graduate Principals of both the primary and secondary schools will be raised from Upper Timescale (gross annual salaries $85,000 to $107,000) to Superscale H ($143,000). In addition, outstanding principals can be promoted beyond Superscale H, up to Superscale E ($188,000).

For non-graduate school Principals, the establishment grade will go up from the current SEO IIA to SEO 1. Outstanding non-graduate Principals will be promoted to SEO 1A, which is the Upper Timescale, or even to Superscale H in very exceptional cases. Both SEO 1 and SEO 1A are currently graduate officer scales.

Outstanding Principals who can reach Superscale E will be promoted to Superscale H by age 40. Officers who have the potential to rise beyond Superscale E, and hold higher responsibilities at MOE HQ, will reach Superscale H even earlier, by mid- to late-30's.

B. Upgrading promotional prospects for teachers

Secondly, the post of HOD will be supplemented by several new positions of Subject Head and Level Head as well as Senior Teachers. The establishment grade for Vice-principals and HODs will also be set one level higher:

	Graduate Vice-principals will be promotable up to SEO 1A and non-graduate Vice-principals to SEO 1.
	HOD and other Head posts as well as Senior Teacher posts will be graded to SEO 1 for graduates and SEO 2 for non-graduates, one clear step higher than the GEO posts for ordinary classroom teachers.

The new post of Senior Teacher is to recognise outstanding classroom teachers who are role models in the teaching profession, but prefer to continue teaching in classrooms rather than move to administrative or management posts. They will serve as mentors for NIE trainees and young teachers. With this, outstanding classroom teachers can have two promotions - one in the GEO grades, another to the basic SEO grade.

The upgrading of middle management posts and the creation of more such posts will significantly improve the opportunities for promotion to SEO posts. Overall, 1 in 3 posts in the Service will be SEO posts, compared to the 1 in 20 at present. In a typical school with an establishment of 75 staff, there will be about 25 posts in SEO grades compared to the mere 2 at the moment, i.e. the Principal and Vice-principal posts. Promotions will not be held back for lack of posts.

GEOs holding positions of higher responsibility, such as Subject Heads, HODs and, in rare instances, Vice-principals and Principals, will receive a post allowance until they are promoted to SEOs. The post allowance for GEO Principals, Vice-principals and HODs in all schools, will be $300/- per month and that of Subject or Level Heads will be $200/- per month.

C. Employing teachers and training them

Thirdly, to remove the disincentive of having to train at NIE first and receive only a bursary at NIE instead of a salary, MOE will do two things:

From this year, MOE will employ teachers directly, before their NIE training, and then send them at full pay to the NIE at the earliest opportunity. The trainee teachers can be employed at anytime during the year, and not just at a fixed period before the NIE academic year starts. The starting salary for trainee teachers will be half an increment below the starting salary on the GEO scale. The trainee teacher's remuneration whilst at NIE, inclusive of bonus and CPF, will be about 90% higher than current bursaries, calculated on an annual basis.

At NIE, trainee teachers will receive their annual salary increments when due. Upon completion of training, they will receive an extra ½ increment in their salaries in recognition of the professional qualification they have just attained. The end result is that teachers, when they have finished their NIE training, will be one salary point higher on the scale than at present.

This change to employ teachers and send them for training is in line with the philosophy that training is an on-going process; and the initial NIE training is but the first step in a long-term process of professional development and upgrading, which MOE takes responsibility for.

D. Raising the career grade for teachers.

The Review Committee has also recommended and the government has agreed that the upper basic grades (GEO 1A/2A) will be the career grades for classroom teachers. Last year, we promoted about half of the teachers who qualify for promotion to GEO 1A/2A. MOE will mount another exercise in June this year to promote the rest. After June, more than 90% of teachers with more than 10 years' service will be in the upper basic grades, as well as a significant number of the teachers with less than 10 years' service.

With this upgrading, the salary scales for the basic grades need not be so long. They will be shortened by a third. The GEO 1 scale will have 14 instead of 21 points, and the non-grad GEO 2 scale will have 18 points instead of 25. Normal classroom teachers will be promoted well within these scales to the upper basic grades.

E. Putting non-graduate officers on a faster track.

Non-graduate officers will also be put on a faster track to merge with the graduate scale. We will replace two existing promotional grades (SEO II and SEO IIA) with a new SEO 2 scale which is in between the old ones. In future, deserving non-graduate officers will be able to advance from the new SEO 2 directly to SEO 1, the first SEO grade for graduates, and then on to even higher levels.

F. Extra promotion exercises

MOE will bring forward its annual promotion exercise from Oct 96 to Jun 96. The following groups of officers will be considered in June:

	all eligible teachers, to upper basic grades;
	officers in old SEO II and SEO IIA grades, to the new SEO 2 or SEO 1 grade.
	all Principals and Vice Principals, to and within SEO grades, including Superscale grades; and
	other officers within SEO grades;

In Oct 96, MOE will conduct another promotion exercise, to promote HODs and HQ officers in equivalent positions into the SEO grades for the first time.

Outstanding teachers will be promoted to the new Senior Teacher grade beginning in Jun 97.

G. Salary adjustment for younger serving GEOs

The new terms for recruitment will take effect from Jul 96. MOE will also make the following one-time transitional adjustments:

Those still undergoing training in the NIE after Jul 96 will be put on salaried terms;

NIE graduates of Jun 96 who join the Service in Jul 96 will start with a salary one point higher; and

Serving teachers who are in the basic grades and not promoted to the upper basic grade in the Jun 96 mass promotion exercise, and whose salaries are below the maximum points of the shortened basic salary scales, will have their salaries revised upwards by one increment. These would be the younger officers who do not yet qualify for promotion to upper basic grades. There are about 5,000 officers in this group.

Conclusion

I would like to urge more of our young people to take up the challenges of the Education Service. It is a satisfying, worthwhile and rewarding career, whether teaching in a classroom or being part of the school or education management team.

When all these improvements are fully implemented, they will cost the Government about $420 mn more each year. This will raise MOE's Expenditure on Manpower for general education by 40%. It is a major commitment and a big sum of money to spend. But it is money well spent because it is vital to attract and retain good people to preserve and further enhance the quality of our education system. It will enable us to educate and train properly a new generation of Singaporeans for the 21st century. It is an investment in our future.