By LM — MOE finally announced that teachers and allied educators will be getting a 5-10% salary increase from 1 Oct 2022. This pay increment is long overdue. Salaries for teachers and allied educators were last reviewed in 2015.
The increase is insufficient if you consider inflation.
Beyond the fact that our teachers are overburdened with long working hours and a poor work-life balance, it has been 7 years since the last salary review. Yet they only promised a wage increase of “5-10%”. The likelihood is that most teachers will only get a 5% increase.
With the upcoming GST increase to 9%, and other tax increases, this is barely enough to cover the past 7 years of inflation. This salary increase should have happened years ago, and the government should not have waited for there to be an exodus of public servants before making such changes.
The fact is we are not paying our teachers well enough.
For a highly educated society, we are unable to even compete with other nations of equal standing. Reform Party’s Kenneth Jeyaretnam, compared the monthly salaries of teachers in the United States, Korea, and the United Kingdom. The sad truth is that even with the raise, our educators are still poorly paid.
This is just another carrot that the government is offering.
While it is still an important carrot, there is so much more the government can afford to do! Our teachers are unsung heroes, and they should be compensated accordingly.
“It’s not totally true that teachers join the profession only for passion and not because of money. They too need to eat, live, spend, save and support family. A reasonable pay is necessary.”
Hong Siang
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