Educator organising in Singapore: protests, progress, and the Singapore Teachers’ Union

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the case of Singapore where there are teachers’ unions but industrial actions are rare. It questions why and how has educator organising, steered by Singapore Teachers’ Union, transformed? Our findings show that historical, political, and socio-economic dynamics have influenced the transformation of STU. For more than seventy years, STU has been a champion, supporter, and advocate of teachers in Singapore through industrial, professional, and social unionism. We argue that the legacy of STU’s struggles, throughout its contentious relationship with the colonial government and collaborative rapport with the local government, has laid the foundation that enables the development of teachers and the high quality of education that the country is currently known for globally. However, persisting residual issues surrounding teachers’ wellbeing due to the high expectations of teachers and teaching call for a review of this state-labour relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• State-labour relations
• teacher organising
• Singapore Teachers’ Union

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Launched in October 2018, the HCI quantifies human capital expectations (knowledge, skills, and health) in 18 years of a child born today (World Bank 2023a).

2 Adjusted to purchasing power parities

3 ‘PISA measures student performance as the extent to which 15-year-old students near the end of their compulsory education have acquired the knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies, particularly in the core domains of reading, mathematics, and science’ (OECD 2023b, 50). The test in 2022 was taken by 700,000 students worldwide, representing 29 million globally, from 81 OECD member and partner economies. A representative sample of randomly selected 6,606 students in Singapore participated in the study.

4 We would like to acknowledge the problematic and simplistic categorisation of ethnicity but its discussion is beyond the scope of this paper. Here, these percentages merely exemplify Singapore’s multi-ethnic society, explaining its bilingual policy and relatedly, the existence of different teachers’ unions.

5 There are four types of schools in Singapore’s education system under the management of its Ministry of Education – primary, secondary, mixed level (primary and secondary), as well as junior colleges/centralised institutes.

6 Exemption from compulsory education can be granted to children who are home-schooled, are attending a designated special educational needs school, or are unsuitable for a national primary school ‘due to any physical, intellectual or developmental disabilities’ (MOE Singapore 2023c).

7 Membership to STU is not limited to school teachers. School administrators such as Principals can also join the union but they will be categorised as members of the General Branch (and not the Ordinary Branch, which most educators belong to). General Branch members can enjoy the same social, recreational, and professional benefits as Ordinary Branch members. However, they can only receive advice from the union in industrial matters ‘related to terms and conditions of service’ (STU 2023c) but cannot be represented by the union.

8 Based on Mike Thiruman’s LinkedIn profile, accessed 16 December 2023

9 Given the vast work of STU over the years, this paper does not aim to be comprehensive due to the constraint of space. Furthermore, as the roles are explained alongside the challenges and barriers that STU and its members were/are facing, the presented findings of the earlier years are more extensive, reflecting the larger extent of turmoil.

10 It is important at this juncture to acknowledge the existence of the Graduate Teachers’ Association (GTA) and other teachers’ unions which represented different groups of teachers. Over the years, educator unionising streamlined into the four teachers’ unions existing today.

11 In order to meet the required increasing teacher numbers, the Teachers’ Training College (TTC), which initially ‘trained teachers in the English medium only’ (Kho 2010), was formed in 1950.

12 As of August 1955, there were 691 Normal-Trained teachers, 95 Certificated teachers, 236 Graduate teachers and 16 staff on Superscale. All expatriate teachers were categorised as Graduate teachers even though not all of them were university graduates (Kua 1971).

13 Devan Nair was one of the founding members of the NTUC. He began his career as a school teacher and became the General Secretary of STU in 1949. After his release from detention in 1953, Nair joined Lee Kuan Yew and other pro-independence individuals, forming the People’s Action Party (PAP) in 1954 (see STU 2006). Two years later, Nair was detained again but when the PAP won the 1959 elections, he was released. Nair continued his work as a unionist, then a politician in Malaysia (1964 to 1969), before returning as NTUC’s Secretary-General in 1970 (NTUC 2023b). He then became the President of the NTUC in 1979 and an elected Member of Parliament. In 1981, Nair was elected as the President of Singapore.