Mental Distress or Psychiatric Issues Reported by Teaching Staff in Schools and Institutes of Higher Learning

Dr Wan Rizal asked the Minister for Education (a) since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, whether there has been an increase in a teacher’s workload and blurring of lines between work and personal time; (b) whether steps have been taken to measure the mental health index of our teachers; and (c) whether there are efforts to ensure that our teachers are not overwhelmed and suffer from burnout.

Our teaching staff have shouldered a heavy responsibility to ensure that our students can continue learning safely during this COVID-19 pandemic. Workload for teaching staff has increased as they are responsible for ensuring that students are educated about and comply with the safe management measures. Each time a confirmed case is notified, staff need to follow-up on contact tracing and communications. When home-based learning (HBL) was declared, teaching staff also needed to make the necessary arrangements, with additional support for students who may not adjust as well to HBL. All these efforts are necessary to allow teaching and learning to continue, despite the pandemic.

To keep track of staff sentiments and well-being, the Ministry of Education (MOE) conducts dipstick polls, school visits by senior management and engagement surveys. The Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) also conduct surveys and staff engagements with leaders.

MOE and the IHLs have put in place measures to address the concerns raised by staff on workload. At the system-level, MOE has reprioritised initiatives and reduced schools’ involvement in HQ work and pilots.

Schools have also been given greater flexibility to pace the implementation of selected initiatives, including deferring implementation, if it helps to spread out staff workload. For example, Secondary schools and JCs were given the option to defer the implementation of Blended Learning to 2022 instead of Term 3 of 2021, as originally planned.

At the school-level, we recognise that ground practices may vary. We have called on school leaders to reprioritise school programmes, establish clear expectations on teachers’ availability and work hours and encourage supervisors to check in with their officers regularly. For example, school leaders have been providing guidance on avoiding parent-staff communications after school operating hours except for urgent matters, such as those involving the safety and well-being of students. This can minimise the blurring of lines between work and personal time.

In line with the streamlined health protocols, ring-fencing policies and contact tracing processes in schools have now also been significantly simplified and teachers’ workload related to COVID-19 management is being reduced.

Similarly, the IHLs have implemented various measures tailored to their institutions, such as reprioritisation of work tasks, to reduce workload and setting clearer expectations that staff need not reply to work emails after office hours unless there are exigencies.

To support staff who need help, MOE provides free counselling services. In addition, MOE, Polytechnic and ITE staff who are public officers can access the whole-of-Government counselling hotline. Staff in the Autonomous Universities have access to either in-house or external counselling services. Before COVID-19, about 50 staff from our schools sought support from MOE’s in-house counsellors annually. The annual number has increased to about 80 since 2020. Similarly, the number of IHL teaching staff seeking counselling support has increased. We do not have more detailed data, as information from all counselling sessions is kept confidential and staff are not required to report mental distress or psychiatric issues.

We recognise the exceptional demands that COVID-19 has placed on our staff and have put in additional effort to promote a positive and supportive work environment for staff well-being across schools and IHLs, such as organising workshops covering stress management and self-care. As part of a new well-being initiative since September 2021, schools have nominated Wellness Ambassadors for staff to receive training on how to provide basic peer support and encourage their peers to seek help. Training has commenced in end-October. Some IHLs are implementing similar initiatives.

To support staff in implementing home-based learning effectively, MOE and the IHLs have provided professional development courses and resources. Learning teams within and across schools also allow staff to collaborate and share good practices on the design and delivery of online lessons.

The well-being of our staff is of paramount importance and MOE and the IHLs will continue to strengthen our support for staff to help ensure their well-being.

I thank the Minister for his reply and note the sensitivity of some of the information. I have three supplementary questions for the Minister.

Firstly, yes, we are aware and we thank MOE for the various mitigation measures to help lighten the stress and mental distress of teachers as well as educators across our educational institutions. The first question is, what are the further concrete steps that MOE can take to reduce further pressures from various stakeholders, non-essential workload and support better work-life harmony, so that teachers and educators can also attend to their loved ones?

The second supplementary question is, can I suggest to the Minister that school leaders, especially, set the tone to look after the well-being of teachers, staff and educators in operationalising MOE's policies as well as meeting the schools' expectations?

My third supplementary question is, to overcome mental health and well-being issues, can I ask MOE HQ and educational institutions alike to work closely with our teachers as well as with teachers' and education's cluster of unions to better manage this issue on the ground, as we hear it is brewing; and in addition, also partnering the community and building the right societal values, especially as we move and chart the way forward in the next normal?

Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank Mr Patrick Tay for his questions and, more importantly, for his concerns for the welfare and well-being of our teachers. I should say a couple of things to set the context as I answer the three supplementary questions from Mr Patrick Tay.

First, I think we should all thank our teachers and educators because, over the last two years, it has really been very tough on them. We are one of the few systems in the entire world that have managed to keep our schools going and to allow our students to continue learning with minimum disruptions during the last two years. So, I really want to say a big "Thank You" to all our teachers for going all out.

Not many of us realise that in order to keep our school system going, the workload for our teachers has more than doubled. In order for us to switch seamlessly from physical schooling to home-based learning, our teachers need to spend a lot of time preparing more than two sets of lesson plans: one set of lesson plans for the school, the physical schooling; and one set of lesson plans for the home-based learning, just in case we need to switch over seamlessly. On top of that, to be able to take care of the higher-needs students who would still need to return to the school during the home-based learning period.

On top of all this, the school leaders and teachers also have to perform the role of contact tracing in case there are cases in the school. We have to do this without additional manpower support. We have seen the challenges that even MOH, together with the support of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), had and how big a challenge this can be. So, all the more, I am deeply appreciative of the efforts by our teachers.

Over the course of the last two years, be it the vaccination programme or the mental and social emotional stresses experienced by our students and their families, many of these will culminate in their experiences in the school, which our teachers also have to manage.

With that at the back of our mind, what can we do as a society to help our teachers manage? Because they are, ultimately, not only teachers but they are also fellow Singaporeans. They also have families that they need to take care of.

I would like to answer the three supplementary questions from Mr Patrick Tay in three parts: what are things that we can do in the short term, things that we can do in the longer term and things that we, as a whole-of-society, can do together to better support our teachers. The fundamental belief is this: if our teachers are well taken care of, they will be able to take care of all our children well. But if our teachers are not well taken care of, if they are not in the best condition, then it is also very difficult for us to expect them to take good care of our children, our students.

In the short term, as I have mentioned, we have adjusted various programmes in order to lighten the workload of our teachers. We have adjusted the schedule as to how we roll out new programmes. We have given the schools some of the flexibility to adjust the scheduling, for example, the implementation of blended learning. And for the Full Subject-Based Banding roll-out, we will have to make some adjustments in order to alleviate the workload on our teachers.

The second thing that we can do in the short term is to use technology for us to scale up the lessons, especially for home-based learning. While in the long term, this will help to lighten the workload of our teachers, in the short term, it actually requires our teachers to do more because we have to switch over from the current physical schooling curriculum to the online curriculum. Many of our teachers will need to learn new skills. But our hope is that, over the longer term, as we leverage technology to scale up the lesson preparation and even some of the class sizes, then we will be able to devote more time to the higher-needs students.

Overall, as a system, it is quite unrealistic for us to expect that we can double the amount of resources overnight. In order to focus more attention and bandwidth on the high-needs students, we will need to find other ways to scale up our curriculum teaching so that we can save some time and bandwidth on the other areas where we can.

The third thing in the short term that we have done is to insert what we call surgical breaks into the term time so that, in case there is a spike in the number of cases where the workload is very high, we can give our teachers a slight break. An example of this is, this year, Term 4, where we took one extra day to declare it as a school holiday after the PSLE marking. That one extra day would have given us a period of about nine days continuously for some of our teachers to take a bit of a break and to spread out their load during the PSLE marking. These are things that we will continue to do.

The fourth thing that we are doing is to make sure that when MOE communicates with our teachers, we do it systematically. We know that this is a large system that operates with 50,000 educators, more than half a million students. We try not to make too many changes too quickly. This allows time for the teachers and the school leadership teams to make the necessary adjustments.

In the longer term, we would need to do much more to help our teachers cope. One is to use technology to scale up our teaching resources so that we can, as I have mentioned, apply the time more surgically to the higher-needs students.

The second thing that we can do to better equip our teachers to manage this is to equip them with the skillsets to detect potential mental health issues among the students and their fellow peers. We are applying it, starting from the National Institute of Education (NIE) curriculum, all the way to their professional development and continuing training. So, these are things we will do over the longer term.

Over the longer term, I would also like to see our teachers systematically given a break or sabbatical, whereby they can go out and recharge themselves. And not just to recharge themselves but also for them to acquire new perspectives, new skills, new connections to bring back to the school. That is my wish over the long term and we will progressively roll this out.

Finally, can I say that to better support our teachers, we really need a whole-of-society approach. Let me say this: I think our teachers work very hard; they care a lot for our students. I do not think our teachers are afraid to work hard. But in working hard, they must be given a sense of agency, that they are in control, that they are doing things with conviction. That is important. And this is why I keep emphasising that no matter how hard our teachers and school leaders work, they must feel that they are in control, with a sense of agency. They can take charge of things, they can customise the curriculum according to the needs of their students, because every school has a different profile of students and no two children are similar. We need to allow teachers and school leaders that autonomy to customise the programmes according to their school needs, according to their students' needs.

The second thing that I think I would say is that we, as a whole-of-society, must also help our teachers in a form of partnership. I will give a very simple example. Our teachers care a lot, many of our teachers even give their handphone numbers to their students, just in case their students get into trouble outside school hours. And I have heard many stories of our students, sometimes calling the teachers in the middle of the night because they got kicked out of home, because of family issues and our teachers respond. This is the extent to which our teachers go, to take care of our students beyond the curriculum time in school.

But in giving out their handphone numbers to the families and the students, we also hope that the families will not abuse the trust. It is one thing for the child to call up the teacher at midnight to say that he is in trouble. It is another thing for the parent to call up the teacher at midnight to ask whether tomorrow the child has spelling and should wear a red or blue T-shirt. If the child does not remember, so be it. It is part of his learning experience. We, as parents, do not need to overly protect our children and deprive them of the learning experience.

I think we need to establish this clear understanding as expectations of parents and society, and that of ourselves, get heightened, a lot of expectations are projected onto our teachers as well. That is why we need to strengthen this partnership. This is the reason why I want to strengthen the partnership between the schools and the parents support groups, not so much just for the parents support groups to support the schools, but also for the parents support groups to support one another in helping one another set the correct expectations, so that we can have a strong partnership between parents and teachers in bringing up our children.

Last but not least, I would say this: in the COVID-19 situation, there are many changes. We may not be perfect and we will not be perfect. All of us can pull together and help one another overcome some of the imperfections that we are facing. Sometimes, we have to make changes. Sometimes, we have to make changes at the last minute because of the circumstances. But all of us can pull together and help one another. For example, some families prefer HBL, some families prefer physical schooling. There will not be a situation where we can meet the needs of everyone.

But we can all help one another, that when we do not get the things that we want for ourselves, for our families, let us not burden the teachers with the excessive demands on the teachers to try and fulfil our own personal needs. That, I think, will go a long way in helping our teachers cope as well. One of the common feedback from our teachers is that most of our parents are very supportive of our teachers, but there is a small minority of parents who place a very huge demand on our teachers. It is perhaps unfair for the teachers if they are unable to spend their time and take care of all the students because of the high demands placed on them by a very small group of parents.

So, we really hope and want to work together with the parents. We also want to work together with society, including the unions, so that we can better support our teachers in an all-rounded way.

Thank you, Speaker. And I thank Minister Chan for sharing about the short- and long-term perspectives of supporting teachers. I think our Government has always been very good with adopting technology enablement to support all our civil and public servants. We have always done very good on that front. But Minister Chan has also acknowledged that a lot of the stress that the teachers feel come from students reaching out to them, things that happen outside of the classroom.

So, I would like to add on to the perspective of our support to teachers on the human support element. I would like to ask the Minister whether any of the support plans that MOE has rendered to teachers can involve none of them requiring to be further trained. When we try to support someone, but we also require them to go through further training to provide peer support, again it adds to the load on their bandwidth and stress.

Number two, I am not sure whether this was covered and I missed it: are there currently any cost subsidies that teachers can have access to when they need to see external counsellors or psychologists to deal with their stress or anxiety levels?

And number three, in line with the perspective about rendering human support, whether MOE will consider, potentially in the long term, developing a team of Allied Educators' supporters or educator carers, to provide a listening ear and pastoral care to our teachers, so that they do not have to take the weight and the burden of all these difficult situations that they are faced with – whether it is their students' mental health, their own mental health – and they have someone to talk to?

And lastly, the question is about whether MOE is effecting any kind of mindset change within the system and amongst school leadership and principals to change their mindset towards the notion that hard work is what it is, and teachers just need to suck it up. Because I think we have seen interviews of teachers that they feel like they do not have a safe space to go to. So, thank you, I hope the Minister can clarify on this.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I will take the four supplementary questions in turn.

First, on the issue of training, we do want to equip our teachers to pick up the signs of distress that may happen to their students and also to their fellow peers. To the extent that we can, we would want to do this as part of their professional training. Having said that, one of the things about counselling services is this: be it students or teachers, they all need someone that they can trust in order for them to open up to the counsellors or to the peer, to share. Without this trusting relationship, it is not a function of how many counsellors that we have. Even if we have the counsellors, be they para-counsellors or full-time counsellors, we need this trust relationship to be established. Which is why from Secondary schools and above, we try as much as possible for the first layer to have the peer support, for each of them to be able to identify their own issues and also to look out for their peers. And then, we escalate it to either the family or the teachers, and we escalate it next level to the full-time counsellors. So, we need to triage this.

The second question, on the subsidy, I do not think the cost should be an issue. As I have mentioned in my reply, there are services available to all our teachers as part of the Public Service as well.

Yes, we are trying to increase the number of Allied Educators and also the para-counsellors but, as I have mentioned, it is not just the numbers that are important; it is also the trust relationship that needs time to build up that is important for the students and the teachers to open up. Definitely, we want to promote a safe environment for people to come forward and seek help. Which is why, just now, in my reply, I mentioned that we do not actively go and track the number of people who seek help because we do not want to give people the wrong impression, that if people seek help, they become a part of the statistics and so forth.

Finally, if I may just make a pitch on this issue for people to come forward and seek help – be it the students or the teachers. We tend to look at mental health as a black or white issue: I am mentally okay, or I am mentally not okay. We may need to update our concept. Let us look at it as a kind of fitness level. We all grow in our fitness level, with a bit of training. Today, I might not be able to run as fast or as far. But with a bit of training, tomorrow I can run further and faster. And mental health is also like that. Today, I might not be able to cope with some things. But tomorrow, with a bit of training, stretching, I might be able to cope a bit more and that is how we grow as individuals.

If we move away from the binary concept of mental health, then I think it would encourage people to come forward and say that we are much more prepared to come forward and seek help, if we think that we are unable to accomplish a task. There is no shame in this. Once we overcome that level of fitness and we become even fitter, we can then take on more stresses and that is how we grow as a person.

With that perspective and that mindset in all school leaders, teachers and students, we will be able to better encourage our people to seek help when they need to. And it is just to stretch ourselves a bit more, to train ourselves up so that we can do better tomorrow than what we have done today.