career package grow 2 for teachers in singapore

New enhanced pay, career package for teachers

Written December 28, 2007 in Work

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THE Education Ministry (MOE) has announced a new and enhanced pay and career package for those in the teaching force.
The changes, which kick in next April aims to make teaching a more attractive job option and encourage current education officers to stay in the profession.

Called the Grow 2.0 Package, the scheme will have an opt-in system which’ll see teachers’ salaries pegged more closely to their performance, with higher salary increases, and bigger bonuses.

Depending on whether they’re appraised as ‘good’, ‘very good’, or ‘outstanding’, educators can expect annual increments of up to four per cent and up to an additional 2.25 months more in performance bonus.

It’s also good news for all 29,000 teachers who stand to gain from an enhanced long-term incentive plan, called the Connect Plan.

Under the current 40-year scheme, teachers receive annual deposits throughout their career and are able to draw a proportion of the money every three to five years.

But now that the scheme has been shortened to 30 years, teachers can expect higher payouts and look forward to drawing their full Connect Plan deposits earlier.

Other changes include new initiatives to improve the professional development and work life harmony of MOE’s education officers.

And for older teachers, a new retirement plan with re-employment opportunities.

I wonder how much of the paper I wrote went into the consideration of this new change. The Press Release is available here. Good to see revisions in the Part-Time Teaching Scheme (PTTS), Adjunct Teachers Scheme and very slight improvements to the Child-Care policies. These changes have been in-line with what we discussed during our summer attachment.

I was very disappointed in the Childcare changes as I was a large advocate of more vigorous changes to improve the implementation of a more family-friendly policy for all teachers (male and female) for a child up to maybe the age of 6 or 10. This was the most biggest sticking point I guess when I spoke to new teachers with young families. They only pushed the envelope to 4 for GROW 2.0.

I like the Specialist Track improvements, and I felt they had it coming. Education Specialists have always never gotten the respect they deserved for making studies to improve various policies.

Now, we just have to wait and read the fine print that comes with GROW 2.0. Is it really as rosy as the press release written by the people in Corporate Communications? On the other hand, are our teachers just expecting too much? Only time will tell.

Tags: career, Discussion and Opinions, education, grow 2.0, ministry, pay, singapore