Singapore teachers work longer hours, report higher stress than OECD average

SINGAPORE: Teachers in Singapore worked longer hours and were more likely to experience a lot of stress compared to the OECD average, a study found.

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey, which is done every five years, is the largest international survey of teachers and principals.

In 2024, 55 education systems were surveyed, including 3,500 lower secondary teachers across all 145 public secondary schools and 10 randomly selected private secondary schools in Singapore. Singapore also took part in the 2013 and 2018 editions.

Mr Desmond Lee, Minister for Education, said at the launch of the study on Tuesday (Oct 7) that large-scale benchmarking studies such as this one provide useful insights on teachers' perspectives and challenges, as well as the teaching practice.

"We can tap these insights to build stronger support systems for our teachers."  

This survey is "extremely useful" for Singapore, since it highlights both the areas where the country has done well and those where it can further improve, he added.

Full-time teachers in Singapore reported that they worked a total of 47.3 hours a week, above the OECD average of 41 hours. This was the same as when the survey was last conducted in 2018, the report showed.

Among the education systems surveyed, teachers in Singapore came in third for the number of hours they work per week, behind Japan at 55 hours and New Zealand at 47.5 hours. 

The survey also found that 27 per cent of teachers in Singapore experienced "a lot" of stress in their work, higher than the OECD average of 19 per cent. This figure increased by 4 percentage points from 2018.

Teachers under 30 were more likely to report feeling "a lot" of stress compared to those aged 50 and above, the results showed.

TIME SPENT ON WORK

Of the teachers surveyed, 10 per cent said their job had "a lot" of negative impact on their mental health, which is similar to the overall average.  

The survey showed that in Singapore, the top three sources of stress were:

• Having too much administrative work to do
• Having too much marking
• Being held responsible for student achievement

One of the findings was that 53 per cent of teachers said that having too much administrative work was the source of “quite a bit” or “a lot” of stress.

Stress is inevitable in every workplace, and it is unrealistic to eliminate all stress factors, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said in response to media queries. 

Similar to 2018, the 2024 survey found that full-time teachers spent four hours a week on administrative work, above the OECD average of three hours.

They also spent 6.4 hours a week marking and correcting student work, a decrease of 1.1 hours from 2018. The OECD average is 4.6 hours.

The study also found that teachers spent less time teaching and more time preparing lessons compared to the OECD average.

Teachers in Singapore said they spent 17.7 hours teaching and 8.2 hours preparing lessons each week, compared to the OECD average of 22.7 hours on teaching and 7.4 hours on preparing lessons.

In Singapore, the time spent preparing lessons went up by 0.9 hours from 2018, while the time spent teaching remained the same, the report said.

The sum of hours spent on different tasks may not be equal to the total number of working hours, because teachers were asked about these elements separately. 

MOE has been examining ways to lighten teachers' workloads, it said in a separate press release on Tuesday.

It previously said that its efforts to streamline non-teaching duties have reduced teachers' examination administrative load by 10 per cent. 

In September last year, former Education Minister Chan Chun Sing announced a pilot for parents to submit their children's medical certificates online via Parents Gateway, to use technology to reduce teachers' workload.

At the time, Mr Chan also set baseline expectations for communication, stressing that teachers should not be expected to respond to work-related messages outside of school hours, except in emergencies.

The ministry has invested in automated marking features and artificial intelligence assessment tools as well, to ease teachers' marking workload, MOE said in its latest press release.

"MOE will continue to build on existing measures to help our teachers manage their workload and support their well-being."

The allocation of teaching hours relative to hours spent on tasks outside of the classroom reflects the "unique role" of teachers in Singapore's education system that "emphasises holistic student development", MOE said in response to media queries. 

"This should not be viewed as teachers spending less time on core teaching duties, but rather, as a deliberate policy design requiring educators to also dedicate time to students' non-academic development." 

Singapore teachers do not just teach students academic skills but also engage them with activities outside of the classroom, MOE added, noting that co-curricular activities are not compulsory in other education systems. 

"Learning journeys" also form a core part of Singapore's learning environment, and the school's administrative team will help with administrative tasks including logistics arrangements, which enables teachers to focus on designing activities, it said.

LEAVING TEACHING

About 29 per cent of teachers in Singapore said they intended to leave teaching, 2 percentage points more than the OECD average. 

Of those who said they intended to leave:

• 71 per cent of those said it was because of personal or family matters
• 50 per cent wanted to pursue further education
• 46 per cent wanted to move to a non-teaching position in the education sector

Of those surveyed, 87 per cent said they were satisfied with their jobs, below the OECD average of 89 per cent, which was a drop of 2 percentage points from 2018.

In Singapore, 55 per cent of teachers agreed or strongly agreed that they were satisfied with their salaries, which was higher than the OECD average of 39 per cent.

Between 2018 and 2024, teachers' satisfaction with their salaries dropped by 17 percentage points, the survey showed. 

Since 2018, the average annual resignation rate of teachers has remained stable at about 2 per cent to 3 per cent, said MOE, noting that this is generally lower than other schemes in the civil service. 

In this context, the intention to leave the teaching profession includes leaving for non-teaching jobs within MOE, such as being posted to headquarters, rather than leaving the teaching force entirely, MOE said in response to media queries. 

"Such career opportunities are not as readily available in other education systems and are useful for professional growth."

ADOPTING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

Teachers in Singapore showed one of the highest adoption rates for online or hybrid teaching, and are among the world's most active users of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, the report showed.

About 75 per cent of the teachers surveyed said that they used AI to teach or facilitate student learning, above the OECD average of 36 per cent.

Teachers also believed that AI could benefit teaching and learning, MOE said in its press release.

For example, 82 per cent agreed that AI helped them formulate or improve their lesson plans, and 74 per cent agreed that it helped them to automate administrative tasks, above the OECD averages of 53 per cent and 45 per cent respectively.

Of those who took part in the study, 81 per cent worked in schools that conducted online or hybrid lessons in the month before the survey was rolled out between April 2024 and August 2024, higher than the OECD average of 16 per cent.

MOE said: "While it was the COVID-19 pandemic that required teachers to quickly adapt to home-based learning, our teachers have since integrated digital tools in their teaching practices to help students become more independent and self-directed learners."

When asked about the time saved from using AI tools in teaching, MOE noted that it takes time and effort for teachers to learn how to use them, integrate them into their work and improve on them. 

Currently, MOE only tracks the usage of AI tools because it would be challenging to estimate the net time saved on AI utilisation, given that teachers are likely to fill up the time they save by engaging in "other meaningful activities", it added.