Relief staff pool among efforts to improve special education teachers' well-being

Special education (Sped) teachers will get more time off to go for training or step away for medical or urgent leave, as a pool of relief teachers will be developed, said Education Minister Chan Chun Sing on Sept 10.

- Gabrielle Chan

The Ministry of Education (MOE) will work with Sped schools and social service agencies (SSAs) to form a pool of relief teachers who can step in when needed, he added.

Mr Chan was responding in Parliament to a question by Mr Patrick Tay (Pioneer) about MOE's plans to better support Sped teachers, to address stress and burnout risks.

MOE will also explore working with Sped schools to conduct joint marketing as a sector to better recruit teachers and improve their human resource management and processes, said Mr Chan.

The careers of Sped teachers should be "as respected, as professionally enriching and as personally satisfying as being a mainstream teacher", he said, "where Sped teachers and leaders can have the confidence that their progression and development will parallel that of our mainstream teachers as a system at the sector level, rather than just within a Sped school".

The ministry will work on providing mainstream and Sped teachers more opportunities to learn from each other in the form of attachments or rotations, to "appreciate other student profiles and contexts", said Mr Chan.