School Educators' Awareness of Academic and Practice Pathways for Emerging Careers

8 Ms See Jinli Jean asked the Minister for Education (a) whether the Ministry requires all secondary school educators to be familiarised with the academic and practice pathways to benchmark and emerging careers under the future economic clusters; and (b) if not, whether the Ministry will consider doing so.

The Minister of State for Education (Ms Gan Siow Huang) (for the Minister for Education) : Mr Speaker, our secondary school teachers can learn about trends in career pathways and skills in demand from Education and Career Guidance (ECG) counsellors in the school. The Ministry of Education (MOE) also organises programmes for teachers to engage with industry partners and economic agencies during industry networking sessions to gather insights and knowledge about the future economic clusters.

Mr Speaker : Ms See, a short supplementary question, please.

Ms See Jinli Jean (Nominated Member) : I thank the Minister of State for the response. I would like to ask, how frequent are these sessions? And given that there has been quite a fair bit of discussions on new careers, such as in AI, how are we working together with the teachers to keep them abreast of these developments so that they can then support the students in selecting careers for the future?

Ms Gan Siow Huang : I thank the Member for the supplementary question. There are various ways that our teachers gather information regarding future economy and the jobs and skills that are in demand. The MOE headquarters, for example, sends quarterly newsletters to our teachers on the emerging economic clusters.

For our students, we do encourage them to seek guidance from the ECG counsellors who are a lot more plugged in and they are specialists on jobs and skills that are in demand in our economy. More than that, we do encourage our students themselves to be empowered and do their own searches online. MySkillsFuture portal has a treasure trove of information about jobs and skills in demand. Also, we know that there are organisations out there, such as NTUC Youth, that reach out to students to provide mentorship and advice.

11.01 am

Mr Speaker : Order, end of question time. The Clerk will now proceed to read the Order of the Day.

[ Pursuant to Standing Order No 22(3), provided that Members had not asked for questions standing in their names to be postponed to a later Sitting day or withdrawn, written answers to questions not reached by the end of Question Time are reproduced in the Appendix. ]