SPEECH BY MR THARMAN SHANMUGARATNAM, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, AT THE 2005 SENIOR EDUCATION OFFICER PROMOTION CEREMONY ON FRIDAY, 15 APR 2005 AT 3.30 PM AT THE GRAND COPTHORNE WATERFRONT HOTEL

SPEECH BY MR THARMAN SHANMUGARATNAM, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, AT THE 2005 SENIOR EDUCATION OFFICER PROMOTION CEREMONY ON FRIDAY, 15 APR 2005 AT 3.30 PM AT THE GRAND COPTHORNE WATERFRONT HOTEL

Mr Chan Soo Sen,

Minister of State,

Mr Hawazi Daipi,

Senior Parliamentary Secretary,

General Lim Chuan Poh,

Permanent Secretary,

Mrs Tan Ching Yee,

Second Permanent Secretary,

Ms Seah Jiak Choo,

Director-General of Education,

Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen

1. I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to our 3,389 MOE officers who have been promoted on 1^st April 2005.

2005 Education Service Promotions

2. Amongst you, 700 officers have been promoted into and within the Senior Education Officer grades and 2,582 officers promoted within the General Education Officer grades. 107 Executive & Administrative Staff have also been promoted. And another 1,095 Education Officers will be promoted later in the year on 1 Oct, assuming their continuing good performance.

3. I am also pleased to announce that the Ministry will appoint another 2 Master Teachers this year, bringing the total number of Master Teachers to 9. The newly appointed Master Teachers, Mdm Ng Tai Cheen and Mr Ho Sin Chan, are both teaching experts in Chinese Language, with a total of 66 years of experience between them.

4. 116 teachers have also been promoted to become Senior Teachers this year. With this year's promotions, we now have a total of 707 Senior Teachers.

5. In addition, we have appointed another 22 Senior Specialists with effect from 1 Apr 2005. With this year’s appointments, we now have a total of 59 Senior Specialists at different levels in MOE HQ.

Enhancements to The Senior Specialist Track

6. We are doing more to enhance the Senior Specialist Track[1], as part of our efforts to keep improving the career development options and progression of our Education Officers. In February this year, I announced changes to the Teaching Track to give greater recognition and better development opportunities for our officers on the Teaching Track.

7. Our Senior Specialists play a critical role in reviewing developments in knowledge and providing professional inputs to guide the evolution of a first class education system. One of our promotees today is Dr Kho Tek Hong, a curriculum specialist who has contributed significantly to Mathematics education in Singapore. Dr Kho led the development of a series of primary school Mathematics textbooks, and the introduction of the mathematics “model” method, as part of the revamp of Mathematics education in primary schools in the last decade. He also led the review of the mathematics curriculum for the revised A-level curricula in 2006. The international recognition that we have received for the high standards of Mathematics education and student excellence in Singapore are due in no small part to the pioneering efforts of Dr Kho and his colleagues. In fact, there have been several requests from schools in other countries, such as the US, for our Mathematics textbooks.

8. Another Senior Specialist that I might highlight, in a different field, is Miss Ko Chai Peng, a guidance specialist who has overseen the implementation of the School Counsellor Scheme in our schools. Miss Ko developed key resources for counselling-related work, including references such as “My Little Helping Book”, and designed training programmes for teacher counsellors. She plays an active role as a consultant to schools on the design of their affective education programmes. Miss Ko is seen as a role model and mentor to the many teacher counsellors in schools and guidance officers in the Ministry.

9. We intend to progressively build up the pool of Senior Specialists in the Ministry. I am pleased to announce the following refinements to the Senior Specialist Track, so that we can identify and develop suitable officers early.

Provisional Senior Specialist Appointment

10. First, the Ministry will allow promising officers to be provisionally appointed as Senior Specialists, without the need to be promoted to the SEO 1 substantive grade. This is similar to the arrangement for Senior Teachers on the teaching track. This enhancement will allow younger officers with the aptitude for specialist work to be identified and groomed earlier by the Ministry.

11. The change will also benefit officers who aspire to the Senior Specialist Track and have the intention to pursue their Masters or higher degrees. With the provisional appointments, they can better tailor their postgraduate coursework and research to their specialist work areas. It will also allow the Ministry to bring a closer nexus between educational research and its applications in our schools.

MOE Postgraduate Scholarships

12. A second enhancement concerns scholarships. Officers who have been appointed as provisional Senior Specialists will be invited to apply for the MOE Postgraduate Scholarship to pursue their Master’s degrees. Outstanding Senior Specialists who already have their Master’s will also be considered for the Scholarship to pursue their PhD.

Attachments to Schools and NIE

13. Senior Specialists working in Ministry HQ will also be sent regularly on school attachments to keep them in touch with the developments on the ground. Similarly, to provide our Senior Specialists with exposure to research in pedagogy and learning, we will also offer more opportunities for them to engage in research and teaching stints in the National Institute of Education.

14. These enhancements to the Senior Specialist track are part and parcel of our efforts to build up a core pool of at least 160 senior specialists within the next five years (59 currently). Specialists with in-depth professional knowledge and know-how in areas such as instructional design, different learning styles, educational psychology and counselling, will play key roles as we shape education for the future.

15. We are no longer followers in education. We have created a vibrant school and tertiary education system, that others are learning from even as we continue to learn from them. Together with other leading cities, we are part of the next wave. We will have to develop our own practices, keep what is strong in our system while improving in other areas and jettisoning practices that are no longer relevant, and always keeping watch on how things are panning out in other countries and cities.

16. The corps of senior specialists at MOE will be at the forefront of this work of evolving education in Singapore, as sentries, architects and artisans in education.

Enabling Our Teachers -- Building a Quality Teaching Force

17. Our teachers on the ground have been, are still, and will always be critical to the success of everything we do in education - both in preserving our strengths and staying relevant to the future. They are the ones who actually nurture our students, inspire them and spur them to become the best individuals they can be. Our teachers’ dedication, commitment and hard work is truly our key asset in education.

18. Teaching is not an easy job. It is certainly not a half or three quarter-day job with long holidays. It is a challenging profession, up there with the best professions. But as many teachers attest, teaching is not just challenging, but in many ways more fulfilling. It draws from the spirit, and feeds the spirit, like few professions do.

19. To help our teachers give their best, we have to keep ensuring that their needs and aspirations are well looked after. And we have to listen to them.

20. Teachers need time to reflect. They need adequate administrative support and resources to effectively teach and guide their students. They need training and professional development to become better at what they do. And as individuals with their own families or interests to pursue, they also need to achieve a good work-life balance.

21. These are not new priorities but they become more important as we go forward. We are no longer in a quantity game in education. We have achieved many of our quantity targets, for example in post-secondary enrollment levels. We have entered a phase that is focused on quality. Preserving quality and enhancing quality, in intellectual exploration, in arts and sports, in debate, in community service endeavours, will be our focus in enabling our teachers. And we know that to inject more quality, our teachers need time and they need space.

22. What more can we do, and how can we do better to support our teachers? The Ministry is consulting actively with teachers and school leaders on these issues. It is not just brainstorming. We aim through our outreach efforts to work out concrete ways to support schools and enable our teachers.

23. The major initiatives we announced during the workplan seminar in September last year, to better enable our teachers, were the fruit of similar outreach. Through our recruitment and training initiatives, we will provide 3,000 more teachers to schools by 2010, which will in effect allow a 15% improvement in our teacher-student ratios. It is a significant enhancement, which schools must take advantage of to give each teacher more time and space.

24. In addition, specialist manpower in the form of full-time school counsellors and special needs officers will be deployed to our schools to work with teachers. Every secondary school, where the challenges of adolescence are greatest, will have a full time counsellor by next year. We have also introduced the Adjunct Teachers Programme last year to allow schools to engage former trained and retired teachers more flexibly. Adjunct teachers are additional resources that schools should tap on to enhance the capacity of their schools and allow their teachers more time to attend courses, and upgrade their skills and knowledge.

25. MOE will take a proactive approach to help schools engage trained former teachers and retired teachers more readily. As a start, Personnel Division is proactively matching schools with adjunct teachers in our database. These are seasoned professionals that schools can tap on to help their teachers.

26. Some of these teacher enabling initiatives, especially the flow through of 3000 additional teachers into schools, will take time to implement. We should not compromise on the quality of teachers we recruit. Selected teacher trainees would also need to be schooled in NIE, and once in schools, have to be nurtured to become effective teachers. But over time, I am confident that these initiatives will result in greater support for all our schools.

School Leaders Play A Key Role

27. Even as the Ministry redoubles its efforts to support teachers as we move into a quality-centred education, I would like to recognise the important role that our school leaders play. School leaders set the tone and create the right environment for our teachers. It is a mature task. Sometimes you spur teachers on, but other times you have to encourage them to slow down and pause. As one of our Principals, Mrs Saraspathy Menon, reflected yesterday after a MOE (PED) seminar, "Sometimes, even when the teachers are keen to sprint, as leaders we may need to hold the rein and pace the race so that they can enjoy it." I am assured that Principals will be able to work this out, with the best interests of our teachers and students in mind.

28. Our schools are in fact adopting a variety of ways to support teachers. For example, around 60 schools have engaged teacher-aides to support our teachers with funds from their manpower grant. Schools are also getting the services of coaches and music professionals to assist in co-curricular activities. These are good practices. They will help to free up our teachers from administrative tasks or tasks requiring specialist expertise, and allow them greater scope and latitude to reflect and experiment with new pedagogical approaches.

29. School leaders are in the best position to assess the need for various school activities, and to set realistic targets that are within the capacity of their teachers and students to strive towards. Schools should continue to review the frequency of assessments and tests, or of activities such as remedial classes, and ensure that they have meaning and purpose. Teachers who enjoy what they do and find purpose in their work do not regard the additional time spent as a chore.

30. On our part, the Ministry is continuing to listen to our teachers on how we can together improve the way teachers work. In our ongoing consultations, many teachers and school leaders have shared with us their views and ideas. It is heartening to know that majority of our teachers care about professional issues and are keen to contribute their ideas and proposals. Teachers have made many useful and practical suggestions on what help they would appreciate. These include the outsourcing of certain administrative tasks, tapping specialist expertise for certain co-curricular activities and school programmes, and better use of IT solutions, for example in taking of student attendance.

31. I would like to encourage all of you to continue sharing your feedback with us so that we can support you better and develop a quality teaching force.

Public Regard for Teachers

32. As we do this, we should always keep our real goals in mind. Education is about the holistic development of the child. We have to continue to nurture values and build character in our students, in and out of the classroom. And as educationists, we must also seize opportunities to upgrade ourselves professionally and to contribute to the school and to Singapore education.

33. But all of you already know this. Teaching is for many a calling. Teachers say there is nothing more fulfilling than seeing their students grow, develop and mature into responsible individuals. When you see a child come to grips with a problem he didn’t think he could solve, when you see a student gain confidence in himself, when you see the smile on the face of your students, when they say thank you for your concern or write you a card of appreciation - you find the joy, satisfaction and fulfilment that teaching brings.

34. It is also this unique quality of the teaching profession, this nurturing quality, that leads Singaporeans at large to hold the profession in the highest regard. In a recent public perception survey conducted by MOE, members of public ranked the teaching profession as that which contributes the most to society, above doctors and lawyers. Such high regard from the public motivates our teachers to contribute their best in nurturing our young, and encourages good individuals to join the Education Service. This virtuous cycle can only help to make the teaching profession a great one to be in.

35. In closing, let me once again congratulate all the officers who have been promoted this year. Keep up the good work!

[1]The Senior Specialist Track is one of the three career tracks introduced in 2001 under the Edu-Pac (Education Service Professional Development And Career Plan). Senior Specialists are Education Officers deployed in professional divisions in the Ministry HQ to work on specialist areas such as Curriculum & Instructional Design, Education Psychology and Education Research & Statistics.