SINGAPORE'S teaching force is becoming more highly qualified.

Higher salaries and faster career tracks are drawing more graduates into the service. Of the 28,000 teachers, 75 per cent have a university degree, up from 60 per cent five years ago.

And of the graduate teachers, about 8 per cent hold masters degrees.

Primary schools have benefited the most from the changing profile, with half their teachers having a university degree now, compared to one in three in 2001.

Explaining the shift, the Education Ministry said it is partly because more fresh and mid-career graduates are being recruited.

More non-graduate teachers are also going back to school to upgrade themselves, mainly through the part-time degree programmes offered by the National Institute of Education (NIE).

Currently, for most teaching positions, the minimum requirement are A levels or a polytechnic diploma.

NIE director Lee Sing Kong said Singapore should aim to have a high-quality teaching force where teachers have a university or even higher degrees.

He said that Finland, which is touted to have one of the best education systems in the world, requires all its new teachers to have at least a masters degree.

Prof Lee cited a recent report by consultancy firm McKinsey on the world's best-performing school systems, which showed that 'the quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else'.

Studies done in the United States have shown that if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed to be in the top fifth percentile of the profession, they end up in the top 10 per cent of student performers.

The reverse is also true - if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom.

Studies have also shown that teacher quality in the early years has more of a profound effect than in the later years.

Graduates who chose to become teachers despite having other career options said that although the salaries and career prospects are more attractive now, they chose to become teachers for other reasons.

Like Ms Carolyn Tan, 27, a civil engineering graduate who now teaches Chinese Language to Primary 1 and 2 children at Yuhua Primary. She said: 'There is no other job quite like teaching. I tried engineering for a very short while, but decided that I was much happier during my stint as a relief teacher. So I applied to become a teacher.'

Ms Linda Marie, 27, a non-graduate teacher at Northbrooks Secondary, who went back to school, believes that the food science degree she obtained from Deakin University in Australia will allow her to delve more deeply into the subject.

'The university course also teaches you to think differently, to look at the links between different disciplines.'

Seng Kang Primary principal Lew-Lim Lan Chin said the non-graduate teachers in her school are 'solid' teachers, as MOE recruits top A-level and diploma graduates.

But she is all for them upgrading their knowledge and skills.

Currently, more than half of her school teachers hold degrees.

Parent Marjorie Mah, 36, an administration manager whose daughter will attend Mayflower Primary next year, said: 'I was pleasantly surprised when the principal told us that many of the teachers there were graduates. I met some of them and was quite impressed. They know their subject areas well and they seem to be dedicated teachers.'

sandra@sph.com.sg

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