Address teachers' heavy workload, not just the inconveniences

While it is good that teachers don't have to respond to work-related messages after school hours, their biggest problem is simply that they're overstretched.

- Elisha Tushara

Before I left the teaching service in April 2023, I was in 15 WhatsApp chat groups that were related to work.

These included chat groups with my form class of 37 Secondary 3 students, 12 English language department teachers, 35 drama club students and 11 subject teachers who also taught my form class.

More than half of these groups had important messages I had to take note of, or reply to, on a daily basis.

Sometimes after five periods of back-to-back lessons, I would check the notifications on my phone and shudder seeing the number of unread messages.

This came to mind when Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said on Sept 18 that teachers do not need to share their personal phone numbers or respond to work-related messages after school hours.

The aim of these new guidelines, he said, is to ensure educators have protected time to spend with their families, rest and recharge.

This is a step in the right direction. I do not think, however, that it will afford teachers more "me-time". Teachers have many demands on their time and taking calls after school hours is just one issue, and perhaps not even the biggest one.

For one thing, the scenario of parents hounding teachers over trivial issues like spelling lists and which attire to wear is probably more common in primary schools, where most children do not have their own mobile phones.

And when I taught in secondary school, I seldom encountered the challenge of being overly accessible to parents or students after school hours.

The messages I received were typically from students, five minutes before the morning flag-raising ceremony, telling me that they were in the toilet with a tummy ache and would not make it for assembly.

So if you tell teachers that they won't be disturbed after school hours, they will thank you. But they will also ask you to look at other aspects of their job that make it difficult.

ONE HAT TOO MANY?