Looking for a better life, teachers?

SINGAPORE: The teaching service has in recent years been upgraded systemically to a stage where it can honestly be described as attractive. This is a far cry from as recently as 15 years ago, when the old school-corridor lament of "over-worked, under-appreciated" was still being heard.

This held down the service as not enough bright sparks were being drawn to it. The recently released career advancement and reward plan for senior teachers by Education Minister Teo Chee Hean now places the service within respectable distance of the legal and medical establishments and uniformed services.

Career paths are clearly marked to suit different temperaments and strengths, and the principle of monetary reward for initiative and adding value is now uniform through the various sectors of the public service. Indeed, generous is the word to describe the gratuity scheme, the star component of the package. This should get young arts and science graduates to beat a path to the National Institute of Education for professional teacher training. It had better -- or the Ministry of Education would be hard put to come up with more tempting bait.

MOE will set aside an amount each year (ranging from S$2,200 to $4,800) for each eligible teacher. Withdrawals can be made at intervals of three to five years, with $4,400 at the low end and $20,000 at the top.

A teacher who does not leave the service -- putting in a full 40 years, that is -- can expect to get a total payout of $90,000 to $120,000 at today's prices.

Teachers would love to have the final payouts nearing retirement inflation-indexed, but that has not been a feature of deferred reward in the civil service. This is a fundamental re- adjustment which would need to be equalized between the public and private sectors, for the sake of fairness.

But even allowing for cumulative inflation and the variable prosperity factor, which may affect the yearly quantum and payouts, this is a remarkable carrot offered to teachers. But there is a catch, in that the reward is conditional on their staying the distance in the profession.

This is fair, a sensible admission that MOE, as with other public employers, suffers frequent draining of trained manpower.

Apart from the gratuity plan and more than adequate rates of salary increment, the charting of career tracks should be a lure to prospective teachers and serving ones.

This is true of a category in the new-look career structure called the senior specialist track, distinct from the teaching and leadership tracks, which provide the troops and brigade commanders. The minister equates these senior specialists with a company's research and development division.

To be based at ministry headquarters, they will chart trends in educational developments and innovate in four broad areas -- curriculum, educational psychology and guidance, testing, research and statistics.

Heavy calls will be made on these people -- systems engineers, after a fashion -- as Singapore's pre-tertiary education is undergoing ferment like never before.

Stress, to take one recurrent theme, weighs students down. It should be recognized as a serious social problem. The minister sees it as a mismatch between expectations and achievement. The tyranny of private tuition is implicated.

One fond wish Singaporean households would have of these continual systems improvements is this: Classroom teaching and time organization are so exact the most anxiety-ridden parent need not inflict private lessons on a child. This is a bigger challenge than educators can imagine.

-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network