Special Needs Training Given to Primary and Secondary School Teachers and Other Specialised Support Required

Ms Nadia Ahmad Samdin asked the Minister for Education (a) what are the mean and median number of hours of special needs training that Primary and Secondary school teachers undergo; and (b) whether there are any trends or growth in specific groups of allied educators where specialised support is required in schools.

All trainee teachers take compulsory modules of up to 36 hours during their training at the National Institute of Education (NIE) to develop a foundational understanding of the needs of diverse learners, including students with Special Educational Needs (SEN), and how to support them. All in-service teachers can access up to six hours of bite-sized, online modules in SEN support, which they may take based on their areas of interest and need. Topics covered include perceptions and beliefs about SEN and the wider SEN landscape in Singapore, common SEN conditions, strategies on working with parents, building a positive classroom culture and leveraging peer support. There are also other SEN-related courses that in-service teachers can sign up for to grow their competencies in inclusive pedagogies.

On top of this, about five to 10 teachers in each school would have attended a 130-hour certificate level course, conducted by NIE, and are designated as Teachers Trained in Special Needs (TSNs). Besides supporting other teachers who teach classes that include students with SEN, some TSNs are members of the school’s Case Management Team (CMT), which comprises Key Personnel and SEN Officers, formerly referred to as Allied Educators (Learning and Behavioural Support). CMT can provide additional help to teachers, in terms of transition support and intervention planning as well as coaching less-experienced colleagues. They also network with counterparts at the cluster, zonal and national levels to learn best practices from other schools, including Special Education (SPED) schools.

MOE has strengthened the specialised support for SEN provided to schools and teachers in recent years. As a baseline provision, each Primary school has two SEN officers, and each Secondary school has one SEN officer. Additional SEN officers are deployed to schools with higher needs. MOE has increased the number of SEN officers from around 450 in 2017 to over 700 in 2021.

MOE will continue to build the capacity of all our educators and monitor and review the provision of allied educators to better support students with SEN in our mainstream schools.