Edu2025 Policy Hackathon

MOS Alvin Tan giving his closing remarks

As alluded to in previous week's blog post, Reactor's edupolicy 2025 hackathon was organised in partnership with MOE and MCCY as it was a follow-up to the Youth Action Plan which had NYC's support as well. Nonetheless, it was still quite surprising that the GOH's planned closing remarks went through a clearing process with inputs from my workplace as well. To be fair, MOS Alvin Tan, spoke without referring much to a script/speech and he was evidenntly paying close attention to the various team's pitches to give more contextualised comments in his actual closing remarks.

Impressive Report Card for the Programme

5 Challenge Statement

YSOs as partner stakeholders/mentors

The teams (including mine) had prepared a 4 minutes video each with voicovers recorded to explain our policy ideas and they were played consecutively while a slido platform was used to capture feedback and questions. It was quite smart of the organisers to use the full zoom screen to show both the videos (they were sufficiently big) and the slido site. My team worked on challenge statement 1 as the 2 students and other JC (GP) teacher also had a heart for the disadvantaged and were keen in addressing the inequity that still prevails. Our pitch video is included at the bottom where we suggested some tweaks and ideas for considerations to make schools mroe inclusive with better social mixing too.

Team O's observations for a need to improve CCE and give free meals

Team R's suggestions to improve SEN resources

Team N's Mental Health app idea

Team M's VARK personalised education idea

Team M also reiterated on the importance of Gen Tech Etiquette

Team K's Innovation incubator idea

Team K suggested an ALP capstone project

I liked how the various team chose their own little niche to target and address and for a totally virtual event like this, it is quite impressive that 17 teams submitted their video ideas which were mostly not repetitive. I suppose part of the plan to get the submissions was the refundable $20 deposit for the event that would be forfeited if a participant did not actively participate. I also appreciated the planning team's efforts of getting the teams together with some diversity in mind and that they emphasised that we should keep to a first name basis without revealing too much about what we do putside so that it would not be too intimidating for the younger participants. I believe I learnt a thing or two from the event and could apply some of what I have learnt for future event planning for the various organisations that I am affliated to. 

Refund process on Typeform with feedback showing partner organisations

A screenshot from my phone

The Reactor team would be putting together a report with the ideas from the various teams and submit it to the relevant ministries for consideration. I think that this way of getting inputs from people on the ground is quite smart and policy planning need not be absolutely detached from the reality as experienced when implemented to stakeholders on the ground. It is nice to know that this government puts in effort to be more consultative. I just hope that some of the ideas from this hackathon are truly considered as they would possibly make education in Singapore in 2025 better.

Group zoomfie with MOS Alvin Tan

A video pitch with some of my team's ideas.