Admin Overload: Why Singapore Teachers Are Burning Out

In the past few months, Singapore’s long-standing conversation about teacher workload has surged back into the spotlight. Media publications such as Channel News Asia and The Straits Times have also published multiple articles highlighting how educators continue to struggle with long hours, rising administrative duties, and a growing sense that more time is spent managing tasks rather than teaching students.

The Hidden Burden: When “Everything Else” Takes More Time Than Teaching

• Based on Singapore’s MOE figures, over the years, teacher workload has remained stable in terms of total hours, at an average of 53 hours, with a significant portion spent on tasks unrelated to teaching.
• The 2024 TALIS study results released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), found that Singapore teachers reported longer working hours per week compared to the OECD average. The longer working hours are attributed to more time spent on other important activities such as lesson preparation, Co-Curricular Activities (CCAs) and professional development. It is also noted that this study only surveyed a sample size of lower secondary school teachers and is not representative of the entire teacher population in public schools.

Some examples of recurrent menial tasks:

• Daily or last-minute relief teacher planning
• Manually coordinating exam invigilation
• Uploading repeated data into multiple systems
• Chasing down information from students
• Managing classroom logistics, paperwork, and duplicated forms
  

These tasks aren’t trivial, however when these tasks pile up, they siphon attention from lesson preparation, feedback, teaching and even relationship-building with students which is the work that actually drives learning outcomes.

The Cost of Inefficiency: Burnout, Attrition, and Lost Focus

The inefficiency created by administrative overload isn’t just about inconvenience — it has measurable consequences.

1. Teacher burnout

When teachers consistently work late nights and weekends, exhaustion becomes the norm. Burnout affects morale, performance, and long-term retention.

2. Reduced personalisation for students

Admin-heavy roles leave little time for tailored feedback, relationship-building, or early detection of struggling students.

3. Decreased school efficiency

When skilled professionals spend hours doing work that can be automated or delegated, the entire system loses productivity.

4. Lower innovation

Educators simply do not have the bandwidth to experiment with new teaching methods or technologies when daily operations already consume their time.

How Dive Analytics Helps Reduce Menial Administrative Burden for Schools

This is exactly where Dive Analytics is committed to making a meaningful difference.

Administrative inefficiency isn’t an abstract problem – it is a real, daily pain point we actively help schools eliminate. Our mission has always been clear: give teachers their time back by removing the operational friction that distracts them from teaching.

1. Roster – Automating Daily Relief Planning

Relief planning is one of the most tedious, time-sensitive, and unavoidable administrative tasks in schools.

Traditionally, teachers or admin staff spend up to 1–2 hours daily manually:

• Checking & matching teacher availability
• Sending WhatsApp, email notifications or even calling the teacher and issuing physical relief slips.
• Manual calculation of relief duties and absences to generate a report using excel.
  

Roster solves all of that automatically.

With Roster:

• Absences are submitted digitally
  The system instantly checks each teacher’s timetable, availability, and based on school’s unique business rules;
• Relief is auto-assigned intelligently
• Notifications go out with a single click or at a particular cut-off time
• Visual charts and dashboards that can be exported into PDF or Excel

Schools using Roster report significant time savings, fewer errors, and improved transparency – all of which reduce stress for teachers, Heads of Departments and Key Appointment Holders.

2. Exam Invigilation Made Simple

Besides automating relief planning, our invigilation module add-on further reduces the time needed to deconflict and assign exam invigilators by automating exam invigilation duties automatically. What used to take days can now be done in minutes.

3. Enroll – Digitalising Student Registration Exercise

Beyond daily relief planning and operational workflows, We have also tackled one of the most time-intensive and resource-heavy administrative processes schools face each year: student enrolment exercise. 

Dive Analytics’ Enroll platform streamlines the annual student registration exercise by digitising and automating what has traditionally been a paper-heavy, manually compiled process:

• Schools can disseminate key information, collect online form submissions, generate personalised student book lists.
• Track completion in real time all through one intuitive portal that parents can use easily on mobile devices.
• Eliminates large-scale manual data entry and repeated follow-ups, saving significant manpower and reducing stress for administrative staff and educators alike. 

By cutting down on manual form handling, report generation, and paper-based workflows, Enroll helps schools not only save time and resources but also build stronger first impressions with parents, allowing teachers and support staff to focus on student engagement from the very start of the academic journey.

4. Long-term vision: Return teaching time back to teachers

Whether it’s relief planning, timetabling, or even well-being monitoring, our approach is consistent:

• Automate what can be automated, simplify what can be simplified
• Remove all duplicated or manual processes
• Surface insights in real time

Teachers shouldn’t be spending hours on tasks that software can do in seconds.

Beyond Technology: A Shared Responsibility

The current conversation in Singapore shows that technology alone isn’t enough. Workload reduction requires:

• Strong leadership support
• Clear administrative processes
• Better implementation of MOE guidelines
• Systems built for real classroom realities
• Consistent measurement of actual time savings

At Dive Analytics, we believe teachers should be empowered, not overwhelmed. By reducing menial administrative work through tools like Roster, and by continuing to develop solutions that free up teacher time, we aim to support a healthier, more sustainable teaching profession.

Because when teachers thrive, students thrive.