Three years into his career as an auditor, Mr Simon Sng was grabbing lunch at a mall when he spotted two students struggling with their accounting homework. Without hesitation, he approached them.
“I just tapped one of them on the shoulder and asked, ‘Are you alright? Do you need help with your accounting homework?’” he recalls. That started an impromptu tutoring session, and the students opened up about what was bothering them. Then came their question that changed everything: “Are you sure you are not a teacher?”
“It was like a trigger point,” Mr Sng says. “I realised teachers impact lives.”
Soon, he would make the leap from auditing into teaching.
More than numbers, it is about integrity
Currently the Year Head (Lower Secondary) at Bedok South Secondary School, Mr Sng was once written off as an at-risk student. “I was not a good student,” he reveals. Behind his skipping of classes and disengagement during lessons, he was shouldering adult responsibilities, working as a private tutor, to help support his family when his mother was ill.
But he had teachers who supported and acknowledged his every progress, showing him that underneath all the missteps was a lot of potential. “I want to be a teacher who can be there for students like they were there for me,” he explains.
His corporate years taught him invaluable lessons about integrity and moral courage. In auditing, he had to surface discrepancies regardless of client pressure. This commitment to do what is right, even in uncomfortable situations, became deeply ingrained in his character.
Now, that same principle is threaded through all he does in education. “It is about teaching students about integrity,” he says, “having the moral courage to stand up for what is right, not just in accounting, but standing up for people who need help.”
Hey, check your receipts!
That honest approach, blended with empathy and spiced with real-world examples, shapes how Mr Sng teaches Principles of Accounts (POA).
When teaching about source documents, he asks: “When you go to McDonald’s to buy a burger, what do you get? The receipt. That’s a source document.” When exploring business models, he turns the classroom into a marketplace of ideas, encouraging students to identify trading and service businesses they encounter daily.
When he puts on his professional lens, he shapes what his students think of POA. “I am not a person who is preparing reports, but I am in an advisory role,” he tells them, reframing their identity from passive recipients to active consultants.
“When I make mistakes in class, I’ll say, ‘Sorry, I missed that. Well done.’ You need to be vulnerable to let them know that you’re human.”
Mr Sng
He also models humility. “When I make mistakes in class, I’ll say, ‘Sorry, I missed that. Well done.’ You need to be vulnerable to let them know that you are human.”
His impact is measurable: An increasing number of his students are applying for business courses at polytechnic and university levels.
“POA is now my strongest subject,” says 16-year-old Aw Jia Jun. “I attribute everything to Mr Sng. In class, he wouldn’t move on unless we understand. There was also a time when I struggled with a concept and went to him for help. He didn’t rush me or brush me off. He explained patiently and made me feel that he genuinely cared.”
His formula for strengthening relations: O3
Does Mr Sng have a strategy for building relationships with his students? Yes, he calls it his “O3 routine”: One Day, One Student, One Discovery.
In his Year Head capacity, he visits classrooms every morning, pulling students aside for a quick chat. “Every student has a story to tell, and that story is unique,” he believes. “If you don’t know that student well, you don’t know their preferred learning style, or any baggage they have at home, that is hampering their learning.”
Along the way, he learned how a particular student could be calmed during a meltdown, and how another was facing a tough situation at home, which explained the misbehaviour in school. He also pioneered a QR Code for students to report situations and signs of distress in their peers.
Working with students extends to having difficult conversations with parents. He might, for example, need to help a parent understand how fights at home were affecting the student’s behaviour at school – not the kind of news already stressed-out parents want to hear. He tries to work out solutions with them to help the student in practical ways. “It’s about letting them know that you are sincere, candid, and genuine in partnering them to support their child.”
When parents blindly defend a child’s inappropriate behaviour, he does not shy away from pointing it out either. “They may be angry at first,” he admits. “But after that, they understand that what I do is out of care for their child.”
Using innovation to plug learning gaps
Spend time with Mr Sng and the systematic approach he applies to all he does is clear.
Having taught POA for over 10 years, he saw the need to plug gaps in student learning, starting with financial literacy; “money skills like saving, spending, budgeting, and giving are learnt too late”.
Together with the POA team at Bedok South Secondary School, he launched two significant initiatives: the National Accounting Challenge in 2023, followed by the National Financial Literacy Challenge in 2024. These are nationwide competitions designed to make accounting and financial concepts accessible and relatable to secondary school students. By using real-world scenarios and gamified challenges, these initiatives aim to spark interest in accounting and financial literacy, showcasing how the concepts are relevant beyond the classroom.
Then comes agency and empowerment: He initiated a social entrepreneurship project for Secondary 3 students to sell sweets, soft toys, and pre-loved items to raise funds for charities. “It is to learn that they do have a voice, and they can make a positive and meaningful difference while applying what they have learned.”
He is currently collaborating with fellow POA teachers to develop an AI chatbot that will provide students with 24/7 personalised POA tutoring. Additionally, as the Student Development Team co-coordinator, he has also led the conceptualisation and creation of competency-based indicators, establishing a shared framework for teachers, students, and parents to discuss holistic development.
To further model collaboration among his colleagues, Mr Sng introduced micro-teaching among his POA peers in his department, in the spirit of professional growth. Teachers come together to observe each other’s lessons and share strategies. These learning conversations allow teachers to support one another, experiment with new methods, and grow together in a safe and constructive environment.
At the national level, he contributed to the Academy of Singapore Teachers’ POA Chapter Core Team in 2023 and 2024 to share effective teaching practices.
For Mr Sng, success is about that important first step forward — from “zero to one”, not zero to 100.
“That is what keeps my enthusiasm alive, seeing that progression, whether in students or teachers,” he says. “It’s never about the numbers, it’s about the student and the teacher. Always.”
