Is holistic education too broad for schools?

Lynda asks whether the holistic education mandate is too open-ended; Manu and Sarah discuss principals' roles and historical emphasis on values.

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Episode notes

Apart from their vocation, teachers also handle administrative work and counselling.

Synopsis: Every second Wednesday of the month, The Straits Times takes a hard look at Singapore's social issues of the day with guests.

Teachers in Singapore work longer than their peers in other advanced economies. They spend less time teaching but more on planning, counselling and communicating with students’ parents, according to the Teaching and Learning International Survey (Talis) released on Oct 7, 2025.

In total, the Talis survey polled 194,000 teachers in 55 education systems across Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

Teachers in Singapore work an average of 47.3 hours a week, higher than the overall average of 41 hours. Approximately 3,500 teachers and respective school principals across all 145 public secondary schools and 10 randomly selected private secondary schools participated in the survey from April to August 2024.

In this episode, ST assistant podcast editor Lynda Hong examines why this is happening, and whether there is any way their workload and stress can be reduced.

In the studio with her is Ms Sarah Tan, a former secondary school teacher with 17 years of experience and taught till 2020, but now gives tuition. She is also a mother of two children aged 13 and 15.

Mr Manogaran Suppiah was formerly the principal of Anderson Serangoon Junior College. He first started out teaching for 16 years, before moving to different departments within the Ministry of Education, including becoming the founding executive director of Academy of Singapore Teachers (AST). In 2022, he retired from his career spanning over 40 years.

Highlights (click/tap above):

7:23 Teacher workload: Why it has gone up

11:08 How technology adds to and can also lighten workload

14:10 Learning to use AI tools?

18:18 Administrative duties, parents' expectations

23:20 On teachers having to 'parent' students?

28:43 Mid-career switches from other professions to teaching: Different perspectives

30:00 Why education leaders must find out from teachers what is meaningless

33:08 School leaders, heads of departments and teachers: What's lacking?

Read ST’s Opinion section: https://str.sg/w7sH

Host: Lynda Hong (lyndahong@sph.com.sg)

Produced and edited by: Hadyu Rahim