Singapore’s teachers are working some of the longest hours in the world and are shouldering higher levels of work-related stress than their peers in other developed nations, a major international study has found.
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The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), conducted every five years, is the world’s largest comparative survey of teachers and school leaders.
Last year, TALIS canvassed 55 education systems, including 3,500 lower secondary teachers across all 145 public secondary schools and 10 randomly selected private secondary schools in Singapore. The city state also took part in the 2013 and 2018 surveys.
At the study’s launch on Tuesday, Education Minister Desmond Lee said large-scale benchmarking exercises such as TALIS offered valuable insights into the perspectives and challenges facing teachers, as well as prevailing teaching practices, which could be used “to build stronger support systems for our teachers”.
Describing the survey as “extremely useful” for Singapore, Lee said it highlighted both the nation’s strengths and areas for further improvement.
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Full-time teachers in Singapore reported working 47.3 hours per week, well above the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development average of 41 hours. This figure has remained unchanged since the previous edition in 2018, according to the report.