With Singapore's local workforce growth slowing due to an ageing population and a widening range of attractive career options, recruiting teachers is "hardly a simple fix", said Minister for Education Desmond Lee.
He was speaking at the Ministry of Education's (MOE) Committee of Supply debate in Parliament on Tuesday (March 3).
During the Committee of Supply debate for the ministry on Monday evening, Workers' Party (WP) MP Assoc Prof Jamus Lim (Sengkang GRC) had raised a cut on class sizes and teacher recruitment.
He said it is paradoxical that teachers in Singapore spend six hours more a week at work compared to their OECD counterparts in 54 other teaching systems, but clocked less teaching time.
"It is clear that the debate isn't so much about whether we should reduce our class sizes, but about how straightforward the solution is — to hire more teachers.
"The ministry's standard response to this has been that this will compromise the quality of the teachers that we hire, while robbing other sectors of talent. MOE also says that there's a dearth of teaching talent. I've always found such arguments to be disingenuous," the WP MP said.
He also suggested that teachers should either be paid more, or have their workload reduced.
A tight labour market: Hardly a simple fix
Addressing Assoc Prof Lim's cut, Education Minister Desmond Lee shared that his ministry has already ramped up teacher recruitment "significantly" and that "these are not trivial challenges".
"From 700 a year previously, to our current target of over 1,000 new teachers a year. That is already a 40 per cent increase," the minister shared.
Lee said that while his ministry recruited over 1,300 teachers in 2025, MOE will have to increase this number "much further" in order to achieve across-the-board class size reductions.
The minister went on to explain why this is not a straightforward issue.
"We are contending with a tight labour market, especially for those we want to recruit as teachers. We need to select not just those with qualifications, but also the aptitude to teach and heart to nurture our next generations.
"Yet, our local workforce growth is slowing, and Singaporeans have many attractive career options. So, this is hardly a simple fix," Lee explained.
The Education Minister also explained why Allied Educators (AEDs) — which doubled over the last ten years, from about 800 to 1,600 — are not primarily deployed for teaching and learning roles. This is in response to Assoc Prof Lim who suggested hiring more AEDs.
AEDs are a specialised group of individuals who provide specialised support and services to students.
"We focused on the high-priority support functions that our schools need most, such as school counsellors and special education needs officers. They play complementary roles alongside teachers, in supporting students of different strengths and needs," Lee said.
CCAs are part of students' holistic development
On Assoc Prof Lim's suggestion that co-curricular activities (CCA) and learning journeys are secondary to classroom instruction, and should be "redirected away" from teachers, the Education Minister reminded the House that CCAs are an important part of holistic development.
He reiterated that while coaches and administrators have been deployed to help relieve teacher workload by running some aspects of CCAs, teachers have a role in nurturing students to develop critical socio-emotional competences.
"So if we were to lower class sizes by restructuring teachers' duties towards academics, we would need to weigh the possible impact on students' holistic development, and teachers' overall working hours," Lee explained.
While the considerations underlying class sizes and recruitment are not simple, Lee said that his ministry remains committed to supporting teachers and students in a sustainable way for the long term.
Rounding up his English speech, the Education Minister revealed that MOE is reviewing the salaries of its educators, including AEDs and MOE Kindergarten educators.
"We will continue to ensure that our teachers are fairly recognised for their hard work and dedication," Lee said.
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