SINGAPORE - New technologies can be leveraged to ease teachers' workload to enable them to focus more on areas such as the social-emotional development of our children, said Education Minister Chan Chun Sing.

In his opening address at the Ministry of Education (MOE) promotion and appointment ceremony on Thursday (April 28), Mr Chan said: "The biggest payoff from applying new technologies will come from how we use them to scale the preparation of teaching resources; how we use adaptive learning systems to stretch our students based on their different abilities; and how we use blended learning to focus the use of our teaching time."

New technologies and pedagogies, he noted, could be used to scale up efficiency and effectiveness in delivering to the masses, while freeing up resources, time and bandwidth to focus on students with greater needs.

"We are and we have been on this trajectory. But we need to do more, faster and better for the benefit of our teachers and students," Mr Chan added.

A total of 5,454 MOE officers, including education officers, allied educators and MOE kindergarten educators, were promoted on April 1.

The ceremony to celebrate their career milestones was held at the Resorts World Convention Centre on Thursday.

Mr Chan highlighted three areas that need greater emphasis in order to seize new opportunities and overcome new challenges in education as Singapore recovers from Covid-19.

They are boosting the competencies of teachers to deal with the demanding social-emotional development needs of students; use of technology to manage workload; and enabling and encouraging greater agency in school leaders and teachers.

Noting why teachers need to be better equipped with the ability to mentor and guide students with social-emotional development needs, he said: "There are more special needs and high needs students whom we are aware of. Part of it can be attributed to demographics; part of it, to better diagnosis."

As teachers cannot be expected to do this alone, there has to be a partnership with parents and the community, said Mr Chan, adding that teachers need to have the skill sets and mindsets to work more closely with parents and community partners.

"Without strong and stable social-emotional support, it is difficult for our children to even start to focus on their academic development," he said.

On the third emphasis, Mr Chan said: "School leaders and teachers must also have the agency to chart the course for your students. Diversity of approaches for the diversity of needs.

"Do things differently, do different things, explore student-initiated learning and even student-initiated CCAs. Nurture our students' discipline and maturity to take the lead and learn from the process and even failures."

Noting the toll that two years of the pandemic had taken on educators, he acknowledged how they had done everything to keep schools open and allow students to continue learning.

He said: "I witnessed first-hand how colleagues were able to pivot within short notice, even though we are such a big system."

Mr Chan also highlighted two educators who, like many others, had to overcome the constraints and embrace the opportunities during the pandemic.

Mr Tham Kine Thong, principal of St Andrew's Junior College (SAJC), had worked with his team to develop the blended learning model for SAJC.

The model encompasses home-based learning to allow students to experience innovative lessons to deepen their understanding of concepts and consolidate their learning.

Ms Nuraini Abu Bakar, school staff developer at Changkat Changi Secondary, was instrumental in driving the blended learning efforts at the school, and in equipping teaching staff to be competent and confident users of technology in the classroom.

It is this same level of vigour and conviction among educators that Mr Chan hopes will carry on and find new ways to engage students and instil a joy of learning.

"I urge that you continue to carry the same positivity as when you were catapulted into full home-based learning for the first time when you became experts in running virtual lessons and video streaming almost overnight," he added.