Following the gruesome alleged murder of a 13-year-old student by a fellow 16-year-old with an axe in River Valley High School on 19 July, about 540 students and staff members have sought support from the Caring Action in Response to Emergencies (CARE) Post set up at the school, said Minister of Education Chan Chun Sing.
Delivering a ministerial statement in Parliament on Tuesday (27 July) about the incident, Mr Chan announced several improvements the Ministry of Education (MOE) is looking to implement so as to strengthen the existing mental health support system.
This includes deploying 1,000 more teacher-counsellors in the next few years, having teachers check in on the well-being of their students at the beginning of each term, and updating the Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) syllabus to focus more on mental wellness.
Regarding the CCE, Mr Chan said: “It includes enhanced features on mental health education, designed to develop our students’ mental health literacy.
“For example, they learn to differentiate normal stress from distress and mental illness, so that they can seek help before becoming overwhelmed.”
In the days following the shocking incident, it was revealed that the 16-year-old student – who has since been charged with murder – was assessed at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in 2019 after an attempted suicide and that he has a history of mental illness.
The conversations sparked by this revelation centred around the issue of mental health support for students and teachers, as well as a renewed discussion on the stigma surrounding mental health.
Addressing stigmatisation, updating CCE for primary levels and below
In Parliament yesterday, The Workers’ Party (WP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Sengkang GRC He Ting Ru sought clarifications from Mr Chan on how the MOE plans to address the issue of stigmatisation that may occur for those who are seeking help in mental health issues.
“How are we going to address the stigmatisation that may occur that mental health issues do not equate to a propensity for violence, particularly given what has just happened?” Ms He questioned.
In response, Mr Chan expressed that it is a community-wide effort to battle stigma against mental health, and urged everyone to spread the message that “not every distressed individual is a violent individual”.
Ms He had also probed on the resources available for students at the primary and lower level, as well as their parents, in terms of mental health. To this, Mr Chan said that it is in the works.
“Having done the review of the CCE curriculum for the secondary schools and in the process of implementing it, MOE will continue to comb through and update the rest of the CCE curriculum including in the primary schools,” he explained.
Additional support for teachers’ extra workload
Ms He had also questioned what support teachers are receiving to handle the extra workload they are expected to carry. Where teachers used to teach subjects and provide career counselling, they are now also expected to look out for the well-being of students, she noted.
Mr Chan replied saying that this is again a community effort, as he encouraged parents to support teachers in looking out for the well-being of their children. He highlighted the parents’ support group as an avenue for parents to lend their support to the schools.
He also detailed the measures in place to equip teachers with emotional well-being literacy, beginning with trainee teachers undergoing basic modules on how to help students by building trust and how to look out for signs of a distressed student.
Once in service, some teachers will be identified – while some volunteer – to take on additional training to become teacher-counsellors, Mr Chan stated. These teachers are provided with “greater training” on how to intervene with students who are distressed and also on working with parents.
From there, some teacher-counsellors may decide to transition into counselling full time as school counsellors, he noted, adding that some school counsellors are also tapped from the external community.
Mr Chan continued, “Having said that, what we can do within the MOE system is also part of a larger whole of society system which MOH and MSF also come into play so that together we build a community of support with different capacities at different levels to allow us to apply the appropriate help to individuals in distress.”
Mental resilience is the goal
Responding to a question from MP for Bukit Batok SMC Murali Pillai on making mental resilience a strategic objective for students, Mr Chan said: “Mental resilience is one of the outcomes that we want in our education system, perhaps more important than ever before.”
“And this is the reason why we want to balance our curriculum,” the Minister stressed, adding that despite the pandemic, the MOE is looking to “bring back the CCAs (co-curricular activities) for the older students as soon as possible”.
“This is part of character development, this is part of the process for them to build social bonds and to develop their emotional and psychological resilience, and we will do this as soon as we can,” he remarked.
Mr Chan then asserted that school is not just about academic pursuits, but also about holistic development of children.
