Long hours, huge stress. So what keeps a teacher going?

A global survey showed teachers in Singapore put in longer hours than their peers. Some still find the profession deeply rewarding.

- Sandra Davie Senior Education Correspondent

The recent Teaching and Learning International Survey, released on Oct 7, has drawn public attention to just how hard Singapore's teachers work. It also prompted many to ask the Ministry of Education to relieve teachers of administrative load and other tasks outside of in-classroom teaching.

But five teachers, including a novice teacher I spoke to, had a surprisingly different take on the findings unveiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) survey.

In a nutshell, according to the survey, Singapore's teachers reported working an average of 47.3 hours a week, higher than the OECD average of 41. They are the third hardest-working in the world, up from seventh in the 2018 survey.

The breakdown on the hours spent in the classroom and outside, though, show that teachers here spend fewer hours teaching and marking, but clock more work time overall due to non-teaching tasks, such as lesson planning, student counselling, co-curricular activities and communicating with parents.

I spoke to five teachers - a mixture of experienced hands and relatively new entrants - about the findings. Surprisingly, all of them said they work more than 47 hours a week. Adding everything up, they estimated that they easily notch up more than 50 hours of work a week.

But while the general public is asking for them to be relieved of some of their non-teaching duties, the teachers themselves had a different take. Their point: Work outside of the classroom should also be considered part of a teacher's work and it is just as important.

A primary school teacher, who is form teacher to several students who live in rental flats located near the school, has strong views about this.

The mother of two who joined the service more than 10 years ago said: "Like many jobs, a teacher's job is multifaceted, and it's hard to put what we do, and the hours we spend, into neat little boxes.