Long hours, huge stress and VIPs (very involved parents). So what keeps a teacher in S’pore going?

The recent

Teaching and Learning International Survey

, released on Oct 7, has drawn public attention to just how hard Singapore’s teachers work. It also prompted many to ask the Ministry of Education to relieve teachers of administrative load and other tasks outside of in-classroom teaching.

But five teachers, including a novice teacher I spoke to, had a surprisingly different take on the findings unveiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) survey.