By Jane Ng

ABOUT 1,500 teachers have been hired since the start of the year, meeting half of the Ministry of Education's (MOE) teacher recruitment targets for the year.

Among them, 70 per cent have at least a year's working experience.

MOE has stepped up its teacher recruitment from 2,300 a year to 3,000 this year in view of the economic downturn, and has received about 10,000 applications so far.

It announced plans last year to hire 7,500 in 2009, including 3,500 teachers and teaching support staff and another 4,000 posts at tertiary institutions and kindergartens.

Education Minister Ng Eng Hen, who gave the update at the ministry's annual promotion ceremony yesterday, said selection criteria remain stringent even if recruitment targets have been raised.

Addressing 430 principals, senior teachers and MOE headquarters staff at the Suntec ballroom, he said providing mid-career entrants a taste of teaching through a new scheme called Project Classroom is one way for them to experience teaching first-hand.

The five-day programme, beginning tomorrow, will see candidates attached to 12 different schools to learn basic pedagogy and classroom management skills.

'We do this to maintain our selection standards and keep to stringent shortlisting processes and rigorous interviews... We want people committed to this job with the right attitude to come in and join us,' he said.

He added that MOE is on track to meet the target set in 2004 of hiring 30,000 teachers by next year.

There are now more than 29,300 trained teachers here, with more than three out of every four being university graduates. Mr Ng said MOE will continue to recruit from the top 30 per cent of each cohort, moving towards all-graduate teacher recruitment by 2015.

To date, MOE has also recruited about 380 allied educators and expects to meet the target of having 680 by the end of this year. They include special needs officers and full-time school counsellors.

A total of 7,067 MOE officers were promoted this year, including 6,854 education officers, 39 allied educators and 174 executive and administrative staff.

More than 1,000 are in Superscale and Senior Education Officer grades. Among them are Ms Connie Seng and Madam Ng Tai Cheen, who have been appointed to the highest teaching position in schools - Master Teacher Level 2.

Ms Seng, 60, an English teacher attached to the North4 cluster of 12 schools, started teaching in a primary school when she was 17.

Madam Ng, 58, has been teaching for 38 years, the bulk of it at Anglo-Chinese School (Junior). She is known for her expertise in teaching Chinese to students from English-speaking backgrounds.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.