EDUCATION SERVICE INCENTIVE PAYMENT BILL

Order for Second reading read. 5.45 pm

The Minister for Education (RAdm Teo Chee Hean): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Education plays a critical role in moulding the future of our nation. Education is not just about imparting academic knowledge. It is about nurturing the whole child. It is about developing the child morally, intellectually, physically, socially and aesthetically. It is about equipping our students for the future.

Teachers play a vital role in educating and developing our young. We must have good teachers and we must have enough of them. Building up a strong teaching force with good experience levels is one of the challenges we face. Many countries face the same challenge. This is all the more important for us because of the profile of our teachers. We project that one quarter of our 24,000 trained teachers will retire over the next 10 years. We must therefore attract young people with the right motivations and commitment to join the teaching profession and, more importantly, to retain sufficient numbers of them. We must ensure that our teachers are properly developed and properly rewarded.

It was with this in mind that the Ministry of Education embarked on a fundamental review of the pay and career structure of the Education Service in September last year. The aim of the review was to better shape the Service to meet the Ministry's organisational needs as well as the personal aspirations of teachers. The Ministry completed the review in April this year. The package, which is named the Education Service Professional Development and Career Plan, or Edu-Pac in short, has been announced to all teachers. Feedback on the package has been positive. Under Edu-Pac, the Ministry will implement a new career structure, a new recognition structure and will enhance the performance management system for teachers. The recommendations are in the process of being implemented.

The CONNECT Plan

A key component of Edu-Pac is the recognition structure, and a key component of the new recognition structure is an incentive payment scheme to encourage teachers to make teaching their life-long career, and at least their long-term career. We are calling this the CONNECT Plan, which stands for CONtiNuity, Experience and Commitment in Teaching.

We will implement the Plan from 1st January next year. Under the Plan, the Ministry will set aside a sum of money every year for each Education Officer who meets performance requirements. The amount will be a flat rate based on the officer's substantive grade and the number of years that he or she has been with the Ministry. The amount, of course, will be dependent on other factors such as the state of the economy.

The deposit amounts will range from $2,000 to $4,800 a year. At defined points every 3 to 5 years, officers will be eligible for a payout from the Plan. The payout will be a proportion of the money that has been accumulated. Larger payouts will be made at the 15th year of service and near the officer's retirement.

The payouts and the money set aside are not an entitlement. Officers will receive the payouts only if they remain in service and meet eligibility conditions. Officers who resign will lose the money that has been set aside for them.

A newly trained teacher who joins service when the Plan is implemented and stays for a full 40-year career could potentially receive a total payout ranging from $90,000 to $120,000, spread over nine payments throughout his career.

The CONNECT Plan will be available to all trained officers in the Timescale grades employed on the permanent establishment. Superscale officers will not be eligible for the Plan, as they will draw other benefits from their overall remuneration package. So this Plan is really aimed at the main teaching force, those who work in the classrooms daily with the children.

Both serving officers and new officers will benefit from the CONNECT Plan. Serving officers will be placed at appropriate points of the Plan. We will manage the transition such that the longer-serving officers will see an earlier payout from the Plan. There will however not be any retrospective amounts given for past service as this is a new fund that has been set aside from next year onwards.

Sir, the Bill before the House entitled "The Education Service Incentive Payment Act" provides for the establishment of the CONNECT Plan and the CONNECT Fund. Let me highlight the key clauses.

Clause 3 provides for regulations to be made to establish and administer the CONNECT Plan. This will enable us to fine-tune the CONNECT Plan as we progress to ensure that the CONNECT Plan remains effective and relevant towards its objective of helping to retain teachers.

Clauses 4 to 10 provide for the CONNECT Plan to be an eligibility and not an entitlement. Officers will not have absolute rights to any payment under the CONNECT Plan and Government's rights to dismiss officers without compensation will also not be limited. The money set aside for officers will not be transferable and will not form part of the officers' properties or estates. The Government will also reserve the right to withhold or refuse any payment to officers who have been convicted in court or have been dealt with disciplinarily.

Clauses 11 to 18 provide for the establishment and management of a new Government Fund called the CONNECT Fund. Money will be set aside each year from the Ministry's budget and paid into the Fund. The periodic payouts to officers will be made from this Fund. By setting aside money in the Fund, we can be assured that there will be sufficient money to pay officers eligible for the payouts and that their payouts will not be affected by the state of the Ministry's budget in any particular year. Besides the payouts under the CONNECT Plan, the Fund will also be used to meet expenses related to the administration of the Fund.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, the CONNECT Plan and the other parts of Edu-Pac are now being implemented and taking shape. The Education Service Incentive Payment Act is a key element of the comprehensive plan that the Ministry is putting in place to build a high quality Education Service. This is our investment for our future.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question proposed.

Dr Wang Kai Yuen: Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, this Bill seeks to establish the CONNECT Plan as a means to retain teachers, particularly young teachers, in the teaching service. It is an award scheme with payments at intermediate break points in a teacher's career. With this scheme in place, the teachers would have some monetary incentive to look forward to as they progress in their careers. It will be a valuable tool to motivate the teachers when their enthusiasm starts to wane, commitment starts to waver, and realism sets in after a few years of service. For those who would otherwise have quit the teaching profession, the scheme would give them cause to pause and weigh the pros and cons of completing the remainder of a prescribed qualifying period. As such, Sir, I support this initiative by the Ministry, as any programme that helps to retain teachers in the service is worthy of consideration. Without a doubt, we shall try our very best to retain the best teachers in the education of our next generation.

Sir, in presenting the scheme to the teachers, I think it is important to re-emphasise that the CONNECT payments are over and above the existing compensation for the teachers. As the Ministry has already just reviewed teachers' pay in the past year, there is no question in my mind that this money paid into the CONNECT Fund is removed from funds that would have otherwise been incorporated into the pay increases of the teachers concerned in the future years.

The Minister has already elaborated on some of the details of the scheme and I believe the total sum to be paid out is quite attractive and shall be welcome by the teachers. However, Sir, while financial incentive is an important useful tool, we should not depend entirely on a financial incentive scheme like the CONNECT Plan to solve the retention problem of the teachers. Many teachers left the service for other reasons as well, and these reasons or root causes should be addressed. Therefore, I think it is useful for the Ministry to review the issue of retention in total and not depend principally on the CONNECT scheme. In his speech, I heard the Minister mention that he has implemented the Edu-Pac scheme to review the Education Service in total, but perhaps he should take this opportunity in implementing the scheme to review all the related issues of teacher retention, eg, workload, career path, training and upgrading.

Sir, it seems to me that the heavy workload of the teachers is a perennial issue. The introduction of administrative assistants in the school is a good start to reduce the workload, but we should not stop there. We could review the course load and other unnecessary demands on a teacher's time. A lower workload might have a better effect, in the sense that it would make the pace more bearable for the teachers who are in for the long haul.

We should also look into the career development and retraining of the teachers. Other staff retention measures should continue to be pursued. These include the pursuit of higher qualifications, career opportunities in education, attendance at seminars, workshops and other courses.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, let me now touch on a few details of the Bill. I believe this Bill excludes independent schools. I understand that the teachers employed directly by the eight independent schools are not included, for the reason that their terms of service are different. I am wondering whether the Government will take care of these teachers through some parallel measures, so that they do not feel left out by the introduction of this scheme when the majority of teachers in Singapore would start to enjoy something over and above their current salaries. Furthermore, since we have a different category of schools called independent schools and if more schools become independent, how do we treat the transition of teachers in those schools going independent in the future when they have already been vested by an endowment or award scheme in this CONNECT Plan?

Sir, clause 7 states that the contributions or awards due to a member will be "excluded property" from the bankrupt member's estate. This gives the impression that a teacher who has served the prescribed period and qualified for the awards would still be entitled to the money even though he is adjudicated a bankrupt later. However, the Explanatory Note on clause 8, which is the clause on "Effect on conviction, dismissal, etc.", dealing with the effect of bankruptcy, conviction, dismissal, states that "Contributions may be withheld and awards refused if the member is a bankrupt .". Sir, this means that a bankrupt might lose all his entitlements under the scheme for past contributions and for service rendered. I wonder why the Explanatory Note of this Bill needs to include this statement on bankruptcy, especially when we are taking measures in this House to render this society more tolerant of failures.

Clause 8: Effect on conviction, dismissal, etc on Awards and Contributions. I believe it is justifiable to withhold or refuse to pay, in part or in whole, if a member has been dismissed or charged with any disciplinary charge for any negligence or misconduct. It also would seem reasonable to deny payment if a member is convicted and sentenced to death or for other penal servitude. But there is a provision to deny payment to a member if he or she were sentenced to any term of imprisonment for any crime or offence that seems to me rather punitive. Perhaps that is the way all Bills in this House are written. But if we read those clauses, one gets the impression that a member of this CONNECT Plan might lose his entitlement even if he were imprisoned for one day for a non-criminal offence. I realise that in the Explanatory Note of the Bill, it did mention that clause 8 would come into force if the member is sentenced to certain penalties due to conviction. This implies that it would not necessarily come into force for all offences resulting in imprisonment. But, nonetheless, I feel that perhaps the Minister could elaborate on the types of offences that would be covered by this clause 8.

On this note, Sir, I support the Bill.

Ms Braema Mathiaparanam (Nominated Member): Thank you, Sir, for the time and thank you also, Members of the House, for believing that I can do something as an NMP.

I support, in principle, this Bill but I have a few reservations that I hope the Education Minister would elaborate. The first one being that the objective of this Bill is to keep teachers in the fore. While these are great monetary benefits that are coming by for teachers who are just beginning as well as teachers who have been there for a long time, I fear that in the implementation of this scheme, teachers who have been there for a long time, here the premise we are talking about is good loyal teachers, might be demoralised in seeing younger teachers catch up in a matter of a few years under this scheme and with better incentives than themselves. So I just wonder whether the Education Ministry could go further with the CONNECT Plan and perhaps give a token lump sum payment in appreciation to teachers who have given long years of service so that they continue to be good serving officers.

The second point that I have here is that all this is going to be based on a good appraisal scheme. I think that there are a lot of good things coming the teachers' way - performance bonuses and good promotion prospects. And now we have the CONNECT Plan too. It then becomes imperative, I believe, for the Education Ministry to have a staff appraisal scheme that is consistent - it is a daunting task - because we are talking about 22,000 teachers spread across more than 200 schools of different streams and school types. But when the Government is giving out quite a lot of money in terms of incentives, I would like to know how the Education Ministry would implement a good standardised system of appraisal better than what it already has.

The third point here is the whole question of exclusion. Like Dr Wang, I too have questions about independent school teachers. Perhaps, is it possible that there is a co-sharing payment scheme for independent schools such that teachers who teach in independent schools do not lose out on the CONNECT Plan?

The other group that I would like to talk about is the special education teachers. I know that for years they have fallen between the cracks of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Community Development and Sports as well as the National Council of Social Service. There are many among the almost 500 teachers giving lots of long years of good service. Without belabouring their contributions, I think perhaps it would be timely if the Education Ministry could mainstream special education teachers and include them in plans like this or see how there can be some kind of contribution across the Ministries and different organisations such that they too do not lose out in the scheme.

Lastly, I do agree with Dr Wang that these are great plans - the CONNECT Plan is good; it is a good incentive. Nevertheless, I think there is something greater, perhaps a systemic situation, within the education system that we need to look at closely. And I think right now there may be a situation, with the recession, that we might have one or two years' lead time to perhaps see who among our retrenched officers can support the school system as a parallel layer of support staff, or whatever, so that we can beef up the whole education system and teachers do not feel overburdened.

Dr Jennifer Lee (Nominated Member): Mr Deputy Speaker, it has been a long day and I think actually Dr Wang and Miss Braemaputhri have covered a lot of ground and issues I had wanted to raise. So I am just going to be very brief and restrict myself to saying I fully support the Plan. I think it is wonderful that we have been hearing in the media of programmes and plans that the Ministry put up for the high-flyers, principals' training, and, I think, there was a Leaders in Education Programme and Master Teachers. But these are the high-flyers and they are important because you leverage on them. You get a multiplier effect. But, essentially, the high-flyers alone cannot do the job. You need the rank-and-file, the majority of those 25,000 teachers who you have to keep on board, who you have to acknowledge, and keep their spirits up, and give them incentives to stay on. Because, regardless of what wonderfully well-crafted and farsighted policies you may have coming out of the Ministry, you cannot have successful implementation without that continuity and that mass of teaching workforce staying on. So I think this is a great plan. Details of issues to be raised, I think, have pretty much been covered. So I would just like to say I support the Bill.

Mr Noris Ong Chin Guan: Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I rise to speak in support of the Bill.

Too often, we tend to associate economic downturn with gloom and doom. We tend to miss out on the silver linings. There are opportunities even in downturns, sometimes in unexpected forms. For example, I see the introduction of this Bill as opportune to incentivise both prospective teachers and current teachers to join and remain in the teaching profession. After all, the current economic downturn has caused many mid-career professionals to look for alternatives and possibly making teaching their second career. The current economic climate has also helped to transform our universities and polytechnics into favourable hunting grounds to recruit more teachers for our schools. I believe that many schools are finding it easier to engage contract teachers as compared to last year.

In the midst of the current economic uncertainty, one thing remains certain - our people are the best resources and that we should continue to invest in our people, especially in educating and equipping our next generation to face the challenges ahead. To succeed in educating our children for the new millennium, we need to retain and enlarge our pool of dedicated teachers over time. Too often, due to the resignations of teachers, our students' learning journey is disrupted. I understand that in some of our neighbourhood schools, some students have to endure up to four different teachers for the same subject during the year owing to resignations, contract teachers leaving to study in NIE, and so on. Our students' learning journey requires experienced teachers who are committed to teach and impart the right value to our students.

Education is ultimately human enterprise requiring committed teachers to reach out and touch the lives of our students. To do this, we need more experienced teachers. We need to both attract and retain our teachers. For this purpose, I commend MOE for their Edu-Pac strategy to help to attract and retain our teachers. The salary revisions are in the right direction. The creation of Senior and Master Teachers, appointments under the Teaching Track Scheme, is in the right direction. I understand that some of our teachers, including contract teachers, are very bright and can go far if they are prepared to commit themselves to the teaching career, which is to seek to incentivise both current teachers and teachers-to-be to remain in service through longer term measures such as the CONNECT Plan. We must ensure that their future is properly taken care of and we must ensure that our teachers get their due respect and reward. After all, we do not want a situation where teachers join the profession by the hordes only to leave a couple of years later when the economy rebounds. This would defeat the purpose. Our schools are not a dumping ground for those who are only interested in seeking shelter from the current economic storm. The teaching profession is for professionals committed to the mission of preparing our next generation for new millennium changes and not for fair-weather job seekers.

To this end, I support the Bill. I would also, however, like to raise two concerns which I hope the Minister can clarify. My fellow MPs have asked the Minister to consider ways in which the CONNECT Plan can recognise in part the past services of teachers. As it is, the teachers' past years of service are not recognised to any extent in the CONNECT Plan, as specified in the Bill. Our older teachers, those in the late 40s and 50s, are on the old pension scheme and their retirement needs taken care of. But the teachers who have served five, 10 or 15 years and so on are not likely to be on any incentive payment scheme. To start them with the same year as newly graduate teachers is no incentive for them. I am not suggesting that the past years of service of teachers not on the pension scheme should be recognised in full. I acknowledge that these teachers are on different remuneration schemes altogether. As a gesture of goodwill and recognition towards the long service of these teachers, I propose that MOE consider their past years of service partially. I do not think that the CONNECT Plan should be so clinical in its starting date for these teachers as it may send the wrong signals to our older teachers not on the pension scheme.

Secondly, Sir, I would like to ask the Minister to clarify how his Ministry intends to implement the scheme without a concomitant pension scheme mentality. By this term, I refer to the mindset of teachers who have lost their interest and passion for teaching but are still staying on the job for the sake of the incentive payment scheme. Having lost their interest and passion for teaching, these teachers also exhibit none of the innovative and creative quality that I feel are the necessary qualifications for our new millennium teachers. Going forward would witness even more rapid changes to our environment and the use of technology in the teaching syllabus and in the methods of teaching. Instead of accelerating the learning journeys of our students, these pension mentality teachers may instead put the brakes on the learning journeys because they themselves are finding it difficult to cope with the changes. To this end, I wish to seek the Minister's assurance that there are measures taken to ensure that the CONNECT Plan does not breed a pension mentality among our teachers. After all, the principal aim of this plan is not merely to attract and retain more teachers but to enlarge the pool of dedicated and experienced teachers. We should not merely be looking at numbers but also the quality of teachers.

Sir, with these concerns that I hope the Minister can clarify, I support the Bill.

Dr S. Vasoo (Tanjong Pagar): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to join in the debate.

Sir, I rise to support the CONNECT Plan because it is an innovative and radical scheme. Unless we try and test this out, we would not be able to know the results. I support this because it is a radical departure from all other efforts that have been undertaken. However, I feel that incentives alone are not sufficient because there is a need to look at other efforts to try and improve the whole education system. What I would like to see is a need to review the organisational structure, both at the middle, the administrative level and at the school level. I would like to ask the Minister whether there will be more efforts to allow teachers to make decisions, to be able to take more charge at the school level and whether we are also looking at providing more autonomy to various schools to manage and direct themselves because these are issues which will address the organisational culture and the structure at the implementation level.

So I hope that these issues which have a direct bearing on the sustenance of teachers, to improve their morale, to allow more creativity and innovation to take place, to me, are equally important. What I want to find out from the Minister is, since he has introduced a number of changes to the teaching service, whether the attrition of teachers has been arrested over the last five years. Is he able to retain more teachers and, if so, is he satisfied that the earlier incentives and changes have in fact addressed some of the attrition problems?

The other issue that I would also like to point out is that we should not neglect teachers who are providing support to the special education sector. There is a large number of teachers who have been contributing to the education of special children and they have spent many dedicated years of service. I hope that this CONNECT Plan will be extended to them. What I would like to ask the Minister is whether he is looking at the needs of these teachers who deserve attention.

Finally, I would also like to find out from the Minister whether teachers from independent schools would benefit from this CONNECT Plan too.

With that note, I would like to support the Bill.

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to thank all the Members who spoke for their support of the Bill. This is an important Bill. But as the Members have pointed out, this is only part of the whole range of weapons, if you like, in the arsenal to try to deal with the issue of making sure that we have enough teachers and that we have good teachers.

As I explained earlier, we have done a fundamental review of the teaching career under Edu-Pac. The recognition system is part of Edu-Pac and this CONNECT Plan is also only one part of the recognition scheme. In Edu-Pac, there has also been a revision in the whole career structure of teachers to have different tracks - the teaching track, the professional track and the leadership track. This would go some way to address some of the concerns that have been raised by Dr Wang and some of the other Members who have spoken.

Some specific questions have been raised: whether monetary incentives are enough and whether we have to do many other things to retain our teachers. Certainly, we have to do many other things to retain our teachers. And under Edu-Pac and in the revision of the way that we manage our schools, we intend to do that. We are giving a lot more autonomy to our schools. In fact, we want to see much more initiative and creativity being exercised by the school leadership in the middle management as well as giving teachers more room in order to make use of new strategies in the classrooms. These are all the things which we want to encourage, and which we want to see, and which we believe would also give the teachers a lot more satisfaction in the kind of work that they do.

In terms of workload, this is also an area which we are very concerned about, and we watch that carefully. One of the ways in which we can reduce the workload of teachers is really to have more teachers so that there are more shoulders in which to spread the load. Edu-Pac, I believe, will help to ensure that we have more teachers in the schools. In fact, I am happy to report to this House that, over the last four to five years, we have actually been able to fill most of the vacancies in the schools. There are of course always some frictional issues because teachers may leave at a particular point in time and there will be some vacancies. But we have managed to fill most of the vacancies in the schools. Not only that, we have managed to add to the establishments of the schools so that, today, compared to five years ago, I would say that, on average, each school has between five and seven more teachers than they used to have. And each school has three more support staff than they used to have, compared to five years ago. So the situation of workload and support staff is improving. But there are no magical solutions. I cannot click my fingers and suddenly produce tens of thousands of people who will meet the quality standard that I am sure this House will demand.

On independent schools, independent school teachers are not covered under the CONNECT Plan because the Ministry of Education does not employ them. The independent schools employ them directly. What we would do is that, in our subvention to the independent schools, we would increase the subvention to include what we would have given under the CONNECT Plan. So it is up to the independent schools to devise their own structures in order to reward the teachers in the way that they feel is necessary.

Why do we have all these exclusions in the Bill for the pay-out from the CONNECT fund? The reason that we have to do so is basically because we want to make sure that these CONNECT pay-outs do not become an entitlement, and that we do have provisions in the Act to allow us to withhold payments for good reasons. So we include all the reasons that we think may arise which would result in us saying, "Well, perhaps it is not such a good idea to pay out these monies from the CONNECT fund to this particular teacher because it would reflect badly on the service if we were to do so." So all these exclusions are there for that purpose.

Are we taking care of the older teachers? The principle under which we will do the pay-outs is this. First of all, this is new money. So I do not have funds basically to go back and reward teachers for the last 20, 30, or 40 years of service. But in any case, those teachers would have received their fair remuneration for those periods of time. Teachers who are longer in the service would also be generally on higher salary scales because they have had more increments. But what we will make sure of in the CONNECT Plan in the design of the pay-outs is that those who have been longer in service will see their pay-outs earlier than those who have been shorter in the service. We will stagger it that way so that the first people to get pay-outs from the CONNECT fund will be the older teachers. And then we will schedule the younger teachers to receive their pay-outs later. They will all receive their pay-in into their own little accounts at the same time. But the older teachers will be the first ones to be able to draw on their CONNECT fund, and I think that is quite fair.

Staff appraisal system is also a very important part of the system. We have to be able to appraise our staff well in order to put in place bonuses, and so on. Staff appraisal is probably more important for bonuses and promotions than for the CONNECT Plan because the CONNECT Plan applies to everybody. But we are putting in place quite a new staff appraisal system and we are going to introduce some revisions to that also at the end of this year. And this is important so that the teachers will be incentivised to perform well and will not have, as Mr Noris Ong said, a "pension mentality". So bonuses, appraisal systems, promotions, are the kinds of things which we will make sure that teachers will remain motivated if they do well.

On special education teachers, I cannot apply the CONNECT Plan to special education teachers because special education teachers are not employed by the Ministry of Education and we will not be able to pay them. I would have no standing to pay them.

There have been some suggestions about making use of the recession to employ more people. Yes, certainly, we are doing that. Our recruitment has been excellent over this past period and our attrition has been relatively low. But I am realistic enough to know that it is not just because of the Ministry of Education, the economy has helped a lot.

I believe that I have answered most of the questions posed by Members. And I would just like to thank Members for giving me this extra weapon in the arsenal to build a good teaching force.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. - [RAdm Teo Chee Hean].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.