SINGAPORE – When some children in his class insisted that pink was a colour for girls, pre-school teacher Muhammad Aliff Mohamed Murat decided to prove them wrong.
The next day, he turned up in a pink shirt, much to their surprise. “I love pink,” he said, before reading them a book about how colours are for everyone.
For the 33-year-old lead teacher at My First Skool in Rivervale Crescent, it was a chance to challenge what children think boys and girls can – or cannot – do.
Some children have even asked him: Can boys be teachers?
“Why not? I’m very excited (to be your teacher) and I’m here to help and teach you,” said Aliff, who has taught for eight years.
The number of male pre-school teachers in Singapore grew from about 190 in 2021 to 300 in 2025 – an increase of nearly 60% in four years, said the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA).
However, they remain a rarity, accounting for only about 1% of the sector’s 28,000 educators across 1,800 pre-schools.
When Aliff first entered the profession in 2018, his career choice raised eyebrows among his family and friends. Some worried about the challenges he would face in a female-dominated profession.
The doubts did not stop there. Some parents were hesitant about having a man teach their children. “It’s a very bitter pill to swallow,” Aliff said.
Over the years, he has learnt that the best way to overcome such reservations is to earn the parents’ trust.
“First and foremost, I’m an educator,” he said. “Gender shouldn’t come into play here.”
Parent Tee Qiu Feng, 33, has seen the influence Aliff had on her son, Anderson. The six-year-old looks up to him and hopes to become a teacher one day.
“Having a male educator also allows children to see that men can be caring, patient, nurturing and responsible,” she said.
For Aliff, who is single and hopes to start a family of his own one day, the job is as much about nurturing children as teaching them their ABCs.
He recalled a six-year-old girl who struggled to make friends and often kept to herself. Rather than focusing only on the girl, he encouraged her classmates to look out for anyone left out and include them in their games.
One day, the girl told him: “When I came to your class, nobody wanted to play with me. Now, everybody wants to play!”
In September, Aliff received a commendation award from ECDA, a milestone in his career as a pre-school educator.
Muhammad Aliff Mohamed Murat says the job is as much about nurturing children as teaching them their ABCs.
ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
Beyond challenging stereotypes on what boys and girls can wear or become, male pre-school teachers can also show children that caring for others is not just women’s work.
Jeannie Ng, campus director of the National Institute of Early Childhood Development’s Temasek Polytechnic campus, said children learn about gender roles through everyday interactions.
Watching a male teacher comfort an upset child or patiently help them settle into an activity shows the children that men can be gentle and nurturing too.
“A male pre-school educator can provide a familiar, everyday example that caregiving is a shared human responsibility,” Ng said.
But the roles teachers take on also matter. If men are always assigned physical activities while women handle caregiving, children may associate certain responsibilities with each gender.
At My First Skool in Tampines, teacher Toh Kiat Boon, 39, regularly pushes back against such assumptions.
When a girl told her classmates she wanted to become a firefighter like her father, some boys insisted that girls could not do the job.
Toh asked them: Why couldn’t a girl become a firefighter? And if only women could teach or nurse, where would that leave him?
He also steps in when some boys are teased for liking pink. “Oh, what a coincidence! My favourite colour is pink too,” he tells them.
Teacher Toh Kiat Boon believes it is important to correct children’s misconceptions about gender before such beliefs become entrenched.
PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO
The father of a two-year-old girl spent more than a decade working in his family’s mechanical engineering business, before making the switch to pre-school education nearly three years ago.
His wife, also a pre-school teacher, encouraged him to try teaching because he had always enjoyed interacting with children.
But being a teacher in a female-dominated workplace comes with certain challenges. Toh said the centre’s restrictions on physical contact mean he cannot comfort children with hugs the way female teachers can.
“So I have to go about getting into their good books in a different way,” he said. He finds out what interests them – from Pokemon cards to stickers – and uses these to build rapport.
He believes it is important to correct children’s misconceptions about gender before such beliefs become entrenched.
He also sees his role as reflecting a broader shift in society, where fathers are increasingly involved in raising their children.
But attitudes have not always kept pace. For Muhamad Shahril Samri, 38, the doubts came from his own friends.
When he joined the pre-school teaching sector nearly a decade ago, some questioned why he wanted a job they considered suitable only for women. “Go and get a real job,” they told him.
The father of a two-month-old girl entered early childhood education by chance. A principal had spotted him conducting workshops on traditional Malay music and instruments and encouraged him to become a teacher.
Shahril will mark 10 years as a pre-school teacher in February 2027. He takes pride in the trust he has earned from parents, some of whom have become advocates for male teachers.
Shahril, who teaches at PCF Sparkletots in Marsiling, hopes the children he teaches will not grow up feeling limited by their gender.
Aliff, too, hopes children will understand that caring for others is not something only women can do.
“Nurturing is a characteristic, it’s a quality that anybody can have,” he said. “It’s like a skill. You need to have it. You need to train it.”