10 December 2021
The Education Ministry (MOE) will have 130 student welfare officers for primary and secondary schools by the end of 2022.
Student welfare officers work with teachers and community partners to address the needs of students with poor school attendance.
The officers also work with students in the most dire straits, for instance, those who are absent from school for prolonged periods of time or those who are statutory cases. Statutory cases include students who have had brushes with the law or are under the Ministry of Social and Family Development’s Child Protective Service.
Additionally, MOE has teacher-counsellors who are trained in basic counselling. The aim is to deploy more than 1,000 such teacher-counsellors across schools in the next few years.