Special Needs

September 25, 2008

Building a strong school team is critical to delivering quality education to every child. The Ministry of Education will consider recruiting only graduates as new teachers by 2015 and introduce programmes to enhance the professional development of the existing teaching force. MOE will also grow the pool of allied educators in schools to provide teachers with greater support in enhancing holistic learning. A new career scheme will also be introduced for the allied educators to recognise their contributions and improve their career progression. Dr Ng Eng Hen, Minister for Education and 2nd Minister for Defence, announced these at the MOE Work Plan Seminar 2008 on 25 Sep 2008.

Introducing a New Allied Educators Scheme

To strengthen the professionalism of the school team, MOE will introduce a new Allied Educators Scheme (AES) from 1 Jan 2009 to attract, motivate and retain good quality people to be Allied Educators (AEDs).

Today, the allied educators working in our schools include Full-time School Counsellors (FTSCs), Special Needs Officers (SNOs) and Education Associates (EDAs). Allied educators are important members of the school team. They work closely with teachers to ensure the holistic development of our students. Currently, there are about 600 allied educators in our schools²”. MOE aims to increase the number of allied educators four-fold to 2,800 by 2016.

Under the new scheme, the salaries of the AEDs will be benchmarked to the market to ensure competitiveness. They will enjoy the school holiday scheme. AEDs will also benefit from better career development and advancement opportunities. Outstanding AEDs can aspire to progress up to positions of superscale grade in MOE HQ.

With the introduction of the AES, the designation of FTSCs, SNOs and EDAs will also be revised from 1 Jan 2009 (refer to table below) to foster a sense of belonging to the larger AED family.