Teachers work fewer hours now, but teach more: Poll

Working conditions for teachers here appear to have improved, with educators putting in fewer hours each week now than they did five years ago.

Teachers say they are spending less time on administrative work and marking, which also gives them more time to teach, according to a new global survey.

However, they still work more - 46 hours per week - than their overseas counterparts, who clock 39 hours a week on average. Teachers overseas also spend more time in the classroom, said the Teaching and Learning International Survey (Talis) released yesterday.

The study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which polled 260,000 teachers worldwide, found that those here worked two hours fewer than the 48 per week they reported in the 2013 study.

This makes teachers here the seventh-most hardworking in the world, down from third in the 2013 survey. Japan's teachers came up top with 56 hours, followed by Kazakhstan and Alberta, Canada.

The five-yearly survey aims to help countries review teacher education and professional development, their instructional beliefs and practices.

Forty-eight education systems joined the latest study, and this is Singapore's second time taking part. About 3,300 teachers and 167 principals from all 157 secondary schools and 12 private schools here took part in the online survey in 2017.

Teachers here spent most of their time on actual teaching, reporting 18 hours per week, up by an hour from 2013. However, this was still fewer than the OECD average of 21 hours.

They spent less time on administrative tasks, from 5.3 hours in 2013 to 3.8 hours last year, and marking, from 8.7 hours in 2013 to 7.5 hours last year. The OECD averages for administrative work and marking were 2.7 hours and 4.2 hours respectively. Lesson preparation for Singapore teachers took up 7.2 hours last year, down from 8.4 hours in 2013, while the OECD average was 6.5 hours.

Director-general of education Wong Siew Hoong said yesterday the reduction in teachers' workload can be attributed largely to their having less administrative work. "This is indeed gratifying to know because the ministry has put in quite a number of initiatives to try and reduce teachers' administrative workload - for example, in attendance marking."

The Ministry of Education (MOE) also said more teachers were confident in using various assessment approaches to evaluate students' understanding of what is taught. They include observation, quizzes and group work, and not just tests and examinations alone.

MOE noted that 76 per cent of teachers felt they could use a repertoire of assessment methods, up from 72 per cent in 2013.

In Singapore, as well as across the countries surveyed, such as Finland and Japan, more than seven in 10 teachers spent time on fundamentals - presenting content clearly, using real-life examples to teach and managing classrooms.

But more teachers were also adopting learning approaches that involve higher-order thinking.

Some 45 per cent of Singapore teachers got their students to solve problems in groups, up from 33 per cent in 2013. And 43 per cent let students use information and communications technology for learning, up from 30 per cent before.

MOE said scrapping some mid-year examinations, which it announced last year, will encourage teachers to teach innovatively.

Orchid Park Secondary principal Shawal Hussin, 50, said schools are always looking for ways to free up time so teachers can "concentrate on their bread and butter, which is teaching".

"In the past, teachers used to do everything, but in the last few years, duties like booking buses for excursions and liaising with vendors have been done by administrative staff," he said. "We also try to merge similar programmes and have more collaboration across departments, so one activity can meet more learning aims.

"A lot is expected of teachers here - they handle co-curricular activities, character education - but it's part of the job and new teachers are also given some time to ease into it."