Development and Retention of Special Education School Teachers

Ms Carrie Tan asked the Minister for Education (a) what is the current status of the supply and readiness of Special Education teachers to meet Singapore’s needs in the next five years; and (b) what plans does the Ministry have to attract talent to join the special education sector and to retain them in the profession.

Mr Chan Chun Sing: Mr Speaker, Sir, let me, first, set out where we are today before I share more with Dr Shahira Abdullah about my views on the way forward.

Today, in Singapore, Special Education (SPED) is supported by the Government, community funders and Social Service Agencies (SSAs). The SSAs have been delivering special education for children with moderate-to-severe special educational needs for decades. Today, we have 22 SPED schools led by 12 SSAs.

While full funding is provided for SPED, SSAs today retain substantial autonomy, including the hiring of staff for their respective SPED schools. MOE has been working closely and supporting SSAs to enhance the career proposition and professionalism of SPED teachers.

One major HR initiative, done in consultation and partnership with SSAs, was the Journeys of Excellence Package, in short, the Journeys Package, launched in 2020. The Journeys Package aims to strengthen the professionalism in SPED as well as recognise the years of experience and service of many SPED educators by placing them at the appropriate competency levels and raising the job size of senior SPED teachers to more closely align with those of equivalent MOE teachers. MOE has been working with SPED schools to put in place progressive HR frameworks to support teacher retention and career development, taking a leaf from MOE’s own frameworks. One example is increasing the number of key personnel positions in SPED schools to provide career advancement opportunities for good-performing SPED teachers.

To support these efforts, SPED schools will receive additional funding for manpower costs in two tranches: one, which was implemented in 2021, and another planned for 2024. To receive the second funding tranche, SPED schools will need to implement more progressive HR practices and the corresponding increases in SPED teacher salaries. SPED schools will determine the salary adjustments for their teachers at different levels based on performance and current salary structures.

Beyond funding and working with SSAs to provide competitive remuneration and meaningful career progression for the 1,600 SPED teachers, MOE funds SPED teachers’ pre-service training in the form of the Diploma in Special Education (DISE) offered by the National Institute of Education (NIE). Around seven in 10 SPED teachers have obtained DISE or joined the sector with other recognised teaching credentials. For the remaining 500 teachers, around half are either on the current course or will be enrolled in DISE in January 2023. MOE also funds in-service training for SPED teachers and invites SPED teachers teaching the national curriculum to attend in-service training alongside MOE teachers. In addition, MOE offers Masters Scholarships in Special Education tenable either overseas or locally.

MOE also works with partners to recognise and profile the important work of SPED teachers. The Outstanding SPED Teacher Award and the soon-to-be-implemented Promising SPED Teacher Award by MOE and SG Enable seek to identify and honour exemplary SPED teachers who are impactful and good role models in the fraternity.

In addition, MOE has seconded MOE educators who have the passion to serve as teachers and key personnel in SPED schools. This includes seconding experienced MOE educators to serve as SPED school principals and vice principals, upon the SSAs’ request. Currently, there are 14 principals and vice principals who are MOE-secondees out of a total of 47 SPED school leaders. MOE is committed to partner closely the SSAs in this journey towards professionalism.

Mr Speaker, Sir, Dr Shahira Abdullah has asked if we will consider enfolding all special education school teachers to come under the Ministry so that they will be able to receive the benefits of being an MOE teacher. My own personal views are as follows.

First, I am prepared to work with my staff, SSAs and the community to explore different and new models. But I would set out five conditions for us to consider as to whether a new model is better and more appropriate.

First, the new model, if it comes about, must deliver better outcomes for our SPED children.

Second, the new model, if it comes about, must deliver better outcomes in terms of support for the SPED children's family.

Third, the model must provide better training opportunities and professional development for our SPED teachers.

Fourth, the model must be able to engage the community to participate and partake in the endeavour.

Fifth, we must also have a model that allows a better continuum of care and support from preschool to school and the post-school environment. So, we are prepared to explore new models with SSAs and the community, so long as we bear in mind these five criteria that I have just laid out. I will be happy to have this conversation with the SSAs and our community partners on how we can take the SPED education sector forward as part of our Forward SG exercise.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for his response. I am very heartened to hear that they are ready to work with the relevant SSAs and organisations. I just have one supplementary question. They are still represented by the Singapore Manual & Mercantile Workers' Union – I understand it maybe because they may have been better adapted to handle this. How has that changed moving forward, so that MOE can better work with the SPED organisations and SPED individuals in this current moment to help retain and attract more SPED teachers to this vocation?

Mr Speaker, Sir. I shall not attempt to answer on behalf of NTUC, but as the ex-Secretary-General of NTUC, I will say that I will leave it to NTUC to decide which union best serves the interests of the SPED school teachers. MOE is agnostic, regardless of whether the SPED school teachers are with SMMWU, STU or any of the other teachers' unions. MOE will continue to work closely with them and also with their SSA organisations.

I thank the Minister for the heartening responses and for being open-minded in looking at future models. I just want to ask the Minister to consider that the whole special education model does not comprise only of staff who are known as teachers. Actually, the holistic development of our students over in the SPED system especially, really includes individuals like the allied professionals, psychologists, therapists, occupational therapists (OTs), speech pathologists, social workers and other staff.

So, in considering and even publicising decisions on salaries and benefits packages of mainstream and other SPED school teachers, we need to consider that the other staff also play critical roles and to also include them as we design future models and future compensation packages for them. So, I would like to ask the Minister to consider that.

Mr Speaker, Sir, we fully agree with Ms Denise Phua's comment that, indeed, the whole SPED sector includes both the people who take care of the education component as well as the care component and the therapy component. So, indeed, whenever we review any scheme of service or any benefits, we will certainly take into account all the stakeholders that are involved in taking care of our SPED children.

Thank you, Speaker. I would like to thank the Minister for addressing the question. But my Question No 6 is about whether we are right now meeting the targets of having enough teachers come forward to enter the SPED sector.

I am heartened to hear that there are training schemes and even sponsorships for a Masters programme and so on. But how are we, in terms of meeting the targets that are needed, in terms of the projections of the number of SPED teachers we will need in the coming years and does the Ministry look into what are the current pain points that are preventing people from coming forward, despite all of these very good incentives and training schemes provided?

The other thing is, I am seeing this disconnect, I am a little bit confused – so, I would appreciate the Minister's clarification. I understand that SSAs are coming under MSF, but MOE is now taking a proactive stance in terms of creating the frameworks and training for the SPED teachers. So, is there any kind of operational disconnect for SSAs that they have to navigate, because of this dual Ministry involvement in terms of the development of the sector?

Mr Speaker, Sir, let me address the three sets of issues that Ms Carrie Tan asked. First, I think we have to deal with the quantity and quality of manpower; two, we have to deal with the pain points that the Member mentioned; and three, it has to do with the organisational structures that we have to deal with.

On the first issue, on the quantity and quality of manpower, certainly, we would need to do much more to increase the number of SPED school educators and support staff. We have laid out the plan together with MSF. We intend to increase the number of SPED schools in our system. But I must share this with the House. In planning for a SPED school, the manpower needs are not as straightforward as a conventional school. Because in a conventional school, the needs are perhaps more homogeneous whereas, in a SPED school, different SPED children have different types of needs and different degrees of severity. This is why the planning is not as straightforward. We do have certain planning ratios, but we, certainly, will need and would like to recruit more Singaporeans to join the SPED sector.

Today, we do rely quite a bit on some foreign manpower and, just like any other parts of our education and care sector, we would like a significant core of Singaporeans to be there, so that we can take care of our own people, especially the vulnerable, even amidst possible disruptions in the manpower supply. So, we will want to step up on this and we do have a roadmap worked out on how we progressively increase the number of SPED school teachers and caregivers as we build up the infrastructure in the next few years.

The second issue is about the pain points. For many of us who have SPED children or have been involved in the SPED school sector, we would know that it is emotionally very demanding. It is not easy. So, I have given guidance to my staff that we cannot just plan on the basis of how many staff we need for how many children. We need to have a bit of a buffer, if you would like, for us to be able to roster our people to go for training and also, sometimes, for them to take a break. So, that is one part of how we try to address the pain points.

The second part is that we would also like to have a wider group of people who understand the SPED community. Even within the MOE conventional schools, we have our fair share of some special needs children where we would need to "up" the skills level of many of our teachers to take care of the higher needs of these children in our conventional schools. That is why we have a system to roster some of our teachers to the SPED schools to cross-share experiences, so that we can take better care of the SPED children in our conventional schools and yet, at the same time, allow some of the SPED school teachers some time to go for their own training and perhaps to be rostered out for a break in their long journey with the SPED sector. So, these are, indeed, some of the things that we need to do.

On the third point about the structure and organisations, rest assured that the two of us work closely together. We sit side-by-side on many committees. We have this model before and we started this model between MSF and MOE, not just for SPED, but we did this for early childhood education. ECDA is an agency that jointly reports to Minister Masagos and myself.

And, of course, I have a secret weapon, to make sure that nothing falls between the cracks. That is my Permanent Secretary, Wan Yong. She is both the Permanent Secretary in MOE and MSF. And I have personally asked her to oversee the continuum to work out the models required to support our SPED community in terms of infrastructure and manpower. I would say that between infrastructure and manpower, infrastructure is the easier of the two. The more difficult of the two is for us to recruit the number and quality of people.

Having said that, we are both working closely now to deal with the most difficult challenge which we want to take a crack at and which we think we need to do much better at as a society. That is the continuum of care from preschool to school and the post-18-year-olds' care and work arrangement for our SPED community.

If anybody can do this well, it must be Singapore, because when the SPED children come to us in the preschools, we have the Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Children (EIPIC); we have the SPED schools for them. With the data that is available, it enables MOE to forward plan the school system requirement. And from MOE's data, we should be able to forward-plan the post-18 requirement and we really want to do this much better.

Our current gap, the biggest gap, in my view, is not so much the preschool and the school system in which we have invested a lot of effort over the years; we can still do better. In our next lap, the biggest gap will be how we provide a continuum from the school system to the post-18 arrangement so that we can better support the SPED community, including the caregivers, who will always be worried about what will happen to their special needs children when they are no longer around.

Thank you, Speaker. Just a quick question for the Minister in regard to his original reply where he stated that there were 1,600 SPED teachers, if I heard him correctly. Can I just confirm with the Minister whether that number includes the allied educators, who are an integral part of the SPED system? As the Minister also shared, in certain cases where there is a gap, a cognitive gap for certain children, the allied educator could be as, if not more important than the SPED teacher, depending on where the child is developmentally.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the short answer is no. As what Ms Denise Phua has said, beyond the SPED educators, we have another group of people, which includes the allied educators, physiotherapists and so forth who form the entire community.

And I can get the Member the number that he had asked for.