31 October 2016

Teachers should focus all their efforts on teaching, and not be burdened with distractions like administrative duties, leading student co-curricular activities, and committee work.

All these extra tasks contribute significantly to longer working hours and add a great deal of stress on educators who have to juggle the needs of students with expectations of parents and at the same time deliver quality lessons.

An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development survey in 2014 found that teachers here clock an average of 48 hours a week, 10 hours more than the global average. The results also showed that they spent almost twice the amount of time on marking and administrative work as their peers overseas.

Singapore’s teaching force at public schools has increased substantially over the years, but there has been no improvement in teaching hours. More should be done to assist teachers like hiring administrative staff to help with logistics and IT tasks.

31 May 2016

A study by the National University of Singapore has found that more girls are being admitted to Singapore Junior Colleges (JC) that require higher entry scores.

About 45 percent of students who entered the better JCs in 1971 were girls. This has risen to 65 percent in 2010.

The study aimed to find out if school and neighbourhood characteristics reinforce inequalities in gender and ethnicity. There is evidence that the gender gap in education had narrowed a lot over time.

However, the data also showed that neighbourhood characteristics amplified gender and ethnic disparities. For example, females are more highly represented in elite JCs particularly if those JCs are in wealthier neighbourhoods.

These findings were presented at a global conference hosted by NUS’ Centre for Family and Population Research.