Quality of preschool teachers: Blame the vague job description

I REFER to last Wednesday's letter by Dr Christine Chen, 'Preschool teaching is about standards'.

On the surface, Dr Chen's letter seems to urge all preschool educators to band together and raise their standards in order to get the Government's attention to raise salaries.

As she says: 'Unless we rally together and demonstrate high standards in our practise, we will not gain societal recognition.'

She seems to suggest that salaries of preschool educators have not increased because preschool educators do not meet these 'standards'. It implies that preschool educators are not professional enough to deserve an increase in salary.

Each year, people like me graduate from Ngee Ann Polytechnic with a diploma in Early Childhood Education - one of the most recognised diplomas in the field.

Why do many of us leave the profession and further our studies in other areas?

Many of us enter the early childhood profession with enthusiasm and expectations that we will be regarded as educators. We start by exuding professionalism in the ways mentioned by Dr Chen.

However, our efforts are restricted and impeded by the very people who tell us to be professional.

A preschool teacher should be given due respect as an educator, preparing children for primary education. However, we cannot do so when we have to multi-task as form teacher and school auntie every day - teaching curriculum one minute and cleaning backsides the next.

How can we maintain these so-called standards, when our job description is not even clearly defined?

As a result, we lose good teachers.

We are all for change and improvement, but it has been a hopeless battle to improve the situation.

It is for the human resource team and centre operators to create clearer roles and job descriptions that will help us achieve this.

One way is to have two types of teachers:

• Educators, who only teach curriculum; and
• Assistants, who are solely in charge of care of children. Perhaps then, preschool educators will not turn up at work looking like aunties, and being berated for it. Marissa Teo (Miss)