Singapore to protect two hours a week for preschool teachers’ planning time

A new requirement taking effect in November 2027 will give full-time preschool educators dedicated time for lesson planning, paperwork and work with families, as the sector faces mounting workload and staffing pressures.

Singapore will require all full-time pre-school teachers to receive at least two hours of protected non-contact time a week from November 2027, in a move the Early Childhood Development Agency says is meant to ease workload pressures and improve the quality of teaching. The policy is intended to give educators time away from direct classroom duties to plan lessons, prepare materials, complete documentation and work with families.

The agency said the sector has about 28,000 educators working across 1,800 preschools, and many have said it is difficult to complete both teaching and professional duties during the working day because of the intensity of the job. By carving out dedicated time, ECDA said it expects centres to help staff manage their responsibilities more sustainably while supporting long-term retention in a sector that has faced persistent manpower pressures.

Preschool operators will have roughly a year to adjust their schedules and staffing arrangements before the rule takes effect. ECDA said centres will have flexibility over how they provide the time, allowing it daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, so long as it comes in blocks of at least one hour and remains within educators’ normal working hours. The agency stressed that the arrangement should not be used to lengthen the working day, and said centres that already provide more than the minimum should continue to do so. The requirement will be written into the Early Childhood Development Centre Code of Practice and forms part of the government’s wider Quality Preschools 2030 plan.

The policy also reflects a growing body of research showing that time away from children is central to early childhood teaching, but is often squeezed by day-to-day demands. A recent study published in ScienceDirect found that non-contact time varies widely across programmes, is often less than intended and is mainly used for preparation, assessment, documentation and relationship-building with families. The study argued that mandatory rules can shape how directors allocate that time and called for policies that set clear minimum requirements.

ECDA has already urged employers to manage workloads more carefully through its human resources guidance for preschools, which recommends scheduling non-contact time outside programme hours where possible, creating shared resource libraries and rotating administrative duties more fairly. The agency has also been redesigning pre-school roles more broadly, including exploring ways to use technology to reduce repetitive work. The government said it has invested more than S$75 million over the past five years in early childhood professional development, reflecting its view that educators’ needs, and those of children and families, will continue to change.