SINGAPORE: Teachers deserve respect as partners in a child's education and should not be treated as service providers fulfilling parental demands, said Minister for Education Chan Chun Sing. 

Speaking in an interview with CNA Digital in January, Mr Chan addressed the evolving expectations of teachers, noting that while most parents are cooperative and engaged, a minority overstep boundaries or make unreasonable demands.

“It is not a service-client mindset, where I expect this and you deliver it to me,” said Mr Chan, stressing that children spend more time with their families than at school. “As parents, we are all the first teachers of our children.” 

The minister was speaking to CNA in an interview looking back at educational policies during the current term of government. In September 2024, he said MOE would protect teachers from “unreasonable expectations” and conduct that affect their well-being. For example, teachers should not be expected to respond to work-related messages outside school hours except in emergencies. 

Parents who impose unreasonable demands on teachers are being unfair to other students and parents, because this deprives the teacher from spending quality time with the rest of their students, said Mr Chan in the interview. 

MOE has implemented an escalation protocol for such cases – teachers and school leaders should first try to manage it because parents need to respect the school’s decisions, he added. 

If parents are allowed to bypass the school's authority and escalate cases to the minister, prime minister or the media, they will stop respecting the school, said Mr Chan. 

To manage vexatious parents, MOE has dedicated teams in place. “Not every school is going to be equipped to handle lawyer letters, police reports and things like that,” he said.

Leaving the teacher to handle these cases is unfair and not good for their work-life balance or mental health, he added. 

Mr Chan reassured teachers that MOE would back them up. Teachers may not be perfect, but he has faith and confidence in how they handle such cases, he said. 

He recounted an incident at a Meet-The-People session where a group of parents pressed him to have their children's exam papers rescored. He explained that an independent group of teachers would conduct the rescoring, and the results could go up, down or remain the same. But they would have to accept the new results.

The parents were stunned at his response. “They looked at me like: ‘How can this be?’” he recalled, expressing concern about the message such actions send to children.

Before they left, he asked them: "Do your children know that you're coming to see the minister to ask for their exam paper to be rescored?" 

He cautioned that if parents consistently intervene to rectify every stumble by their children, they risk imparting the wrong values. While students may sometimes feel they received an unfair grade, knowing that their parents escalated their concerns to MOE and the education minister to demand that their papers be rescored “sends a different message”. 

Responding to a question about whether MOE’s efforts to reduce the fixation on grades have been successful, Mr Chan clarified that eliminating stress is not the primary goal. 

“No stress doesn’t mean that it is necessarily most suitable for the child,” he said. “Our job is to help them overcome the stress, and over time, to slowly become more confident. Not so much to take away the stress from them, or to take away the ability to resolve the problem from them.” 

Singaporean parents are sometimes too eager to take away obstacles, or stress, from their children, but growth sometimes comes from navigating these difficulties, said Mr Chan. 

“It is one thing for our children to perform because they are provided for in a very structured and protected environment. It's another thing for them to perform when the environment is not as structured and not so much is provided for. And that is the real test beyond school.” 

More parents now recognise that children are different and need different support systems, he said. 

“We don’t need to keep comparing them with somebody else,” he said, adding that MOE is trying to get this message out through parent support groups.