The Singapore Amazing Flying Machine Competition (SAFMC) was first held in 2009 and has since become an annual international event. It takes place at the Singapore Science Center and attracts participants from various Asian countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong. To date, over 17,000 individuals have participated in the event.
Hong Kong Pun U Association Wah Yan Primary School has participated in this competition since 2017, achieving outstanding results. The school principal, Dr. John Tan, had previously brought Wah Yan teachers to Xavier Jesuit School Cambodia to share their competition experience with our teachers and students. Later, they even helped us apply for sponsorship from the Lam Foundation, and we successfully registered to participate in 2020. We prepared for the event until the final stages, but we were unable to compete because the competition was canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
As the situation with the pandemic gradually stabilized, the competition resumed. With the support of the Lam Foundation and the assistance of Dr. Tan together with the teachers from Wah Yan Primary School, we were able to secure a spot in the 2023 competition. At the beginning of the school year, we selected teachers to train and lead a team consisting of three boys from grade 5 & grade 6, who were eager to learn from this rare experience.
The competition involved creating different flying machines for different age groups. For the primary school category (Category A), the challenge was to make a paper airplane that could fly the farthest distance, stay aloft for the longest time, and perform a successful loop before being caught. These skills could be mastered to some extent within the two-month training period.
The most challenging part was the oral presentation in English, where the students had to describe the principles of flight they discovered during the practice and how they improved their flying skills. From the perspective of language and knowledge level, these were impossible challenges for our Cambodian primary school students. We could only provide some basic content to help the students prepare, hoping that they would not appear too nervous in front of the judges.
On March 19, 2023, the XJS team participated in this international competition. Our team put up an impressive performance in the range challenge competition, and during the presentation session, they spoke for the entire allotted time of 5 minutes, delivering their speech in English. We did win any awards, but participating in this competition itself was a breakthrough not just for our students, but also for our teachers and school.