Following NTUC’s calls in Parliament to review teachers’ workloads, the Ministry of Education has outlined several measures to recalibrate educators’ jobs, as part of its wider redesign of teaching and learning approaches.
The announcements follow NTUC Labour MP Wan Rizal and Jurong East–Bukit Batok GRC MP David Hoe’s calls in a jointly tabled parliamentary adjournment motion on building a sustainable educator workforce on 8 September 2026.
Both Mr Wan Rizal and Mr Hoe are advisors to the Singapore Teachers’ Union (STU).
The Government will pilot most of the measures in in six schools before being rolled out more broadly. The participating schools are St Anthony’s Canossian, Woodgrove and Zhangde primary schools, as well as Commonwealth, Deyi and Jurongville secondary schools.
Primary and secondary school teachers could soon see some of their responsibilities reduced, giving them more time to focus on teaching and interacting with students.
Minister for Education Desmond Lee said the Ministry of Education (MOE) is studying plans to allow teachers to focus on two, instead of three, areas of responsibility outside classroom teaching.
The move comes shortly after Mr Hoe called for a review of teachers’ workloads beyond the classroom during a parliamentary adjournment motion titled “Sustainable Educator Workforce to Support Singapore’s Next Phase of Education Reform”.
“Such reviews should ultimately help schools establish a realistic workload ceiling, calibrated to their circumstances, with proper justification and additional resourcing where exceptions are necessary,” he said.
Many teachers are currently involved in three areas of external work: form teacher duties, co-curricular activities and committee work.
“Many teachers tell us that switching constantly between different responsibilities takes not just time but also mental bandwidth.
“With less switching between responsibilities, our teachers can invest a bit more of their bandwidth into stronger classroom practices and richer interactions with their students,” Mr Lee said at MOE’s Schools Work Plan Seminar on 16 September 2026.
The education ministry also proposed a more deliberate shift towards tapping external expertise for non-classroom activities, allowing teachers to focus on areas where their involvement is most needed.
Mr Lee said MOE intends to increase the involvement of coaches, instructors, non-teaching staff and external partners in supporting CCAs and student development programmes, including related administrative work.
The plan aligns with Mr Hoe’s call during the parliamentary adjournment motion to strengthen the capacity of school administration teams. He had also requested more funding for vendors to support non-academic activities such as events, enrichment programmes and camps.
Meanwhile, Mr Lee reassured teachers that they would continue to play an integral role in students’ holistic development, including helping them build the competencies needed to thrive in a fast-changing digital world.
MOE is also exploring smaller class sizes to help teachers better support students with different learning needs, as part of its broader redesign of teaching and learning.
The move aligns with Mr Wan Rizal’s call for smaller classes to support teachers handling students with more complex learning needs.
“Smaller classes could give teachers more scope and opportunity to provide individual attention, build relationships and respond to different learning needs,” Mr Wan Rizal said in his parliamentary adjournment motion speech.
Currently, class sizes vary according to students’ age, learning needs and subject requirements. They range from around 30 students in Primary 1 and 2 to smaller groups for learning support, applied learning and selected subjects under Full Subject-Based Banding.
At the workplan seminar, the minister cautioned, however, that smaller classes may not necessarily reduce teachers’ workloads, as teachers could end up teaching more classes. But, alongside efforts such as technology adoption, smaller classes could give teachers more time and capacity to focus on teaching, he added.
Teachers can also look forward to a new digital platform to help them manage day-to-day tasks more effectively.
The announcement comes as Mr Wan Rizal, who is NTUC’s e2i Stakeholder Management Director, raised concerns about the impact of major AI and education technology rollouts on teachers’ workloads in his adjournment motion speech.
“We should avoid introducing a digital system while retaining the manual process. Most importantly, we should establish whether time saved is returned as protected planning time, student engagement or even rest, and whether excessive total hours are reduced,” Mr Wan Rizal said.
The education minister said the new Teacher Workspace brings data, tools and workflows onto a single platform, allowing teachers to carry out regular tasks such as coordinating student support and communicating with parents through a single login.
“Teachers have told us how much time it takes to navigate multiple systems, complete forms and piece together information across platforms,” Mr Lee said.
Currently being piloted in around 20 schools, the platform will be rolled out to all MOE schools by 2027, with additional features introduced progressively.
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