Not all teachers in Singapore desire to rise through the ranks to head of department (HoD) or beyond. Many are content to stay in the classroom, branding themselves as HOT – happy, ordinary teachers.

Singapore is providing teachers with three clear ‘tracks’ for career development: school leadership (e.g. HoD, principal, etc.), specialist, and teaching. The teaching track sees the best teachers stay in the classroom, but as leaders. The progression is from teacher to senior, lead, master, and the pinnacle – principal master teacher.

“The main message we are sending to them is that you are a teacher leader. It takes them a while to wear that hat,” says Manogaran Suppiah, executive director of the Academy of Singapore Teachers.

Developing leadership capacity is the responsibility of the academy, set up in 2010 as a division of Singapore’s Ministry of Education. It is off to a flying start with a teaching workforce of 33,000; last year, 25,000 teachers enrolled in the academy for professional development courses. The critical feature of the academy is that it is a teacher-led community; workshops are led by teacher leaders.

Teacher leaders become leaders only by sharing their knowledge to help others improve. This built-in requirement of collaboration negates any concern of teachers nastily vying for top positions.

So could this professional development system work in New Zealand? The teaching track recognises that not all teachers have the interest or disposition to be an HoD. Yet staying in the classroom doesn’t signal the end point in their career. It encourages the best teachers to stay in the classroom and it could encourage the best teachers to move to schools that need them the most.

How so? In Singapore, there are only so many teacher leader positions within one school or a cluster of schools. In a school that tends to attract the best teachers, it is more difficult to get one of these positions. So progression requires moving to a school that doesn’t usually attract the best teachers. The result is that those schools attract teachers who are not only great in the classroom but are also willing to share their expertise with others, thereby raising the quality of teaching. This evens out the playing field while lifting the overall game.

The acronym isn’t quite as catchy, but perhaps Singapore’s happy ordinary teachers are becoming happy extraordinary teachers (HET).

Rose Patterson is working on The New Zealand Initiative's project on teacher quality. She has just visited Singapore as part of her research. Watch Rose talk about her findings on our YouTube channel.