Project's Day

Friday marked the end of my 'volunteer to help Dr Tan' work. Dr Tan started this Centad mini-project thing in the March holidays for JC1 students who did not have much lab experience to know what a typical science project would be like, and whether they would want to join a Centad project. Basically I was there as a teacher assistant to ensure the students follow lab safety procedures and guide them along in lab techniques and the questions given to them.
While the time spent there was quite normal aka nothing particularly interesting to talk about, Dr Tan did discuss with me something that I find quite thought-provoking. As he was now a full-time research head, he became involved with the Project's Day competition in high school, and he found many fundamental flaws with the Project's Day experimental research category. I had once thought about it but didn't go deep into that topic until Dr Tan brought it up again.
The sad thing about experiments in high school is that people do it for results and immediate tangible benefits (such as awards, ACE, grades, etc) Which is why everything bio seems to be anti-bacterial and everything chem seems to be waste water treatment. Furthermore, the rubrics for Project's Day sort of encouraged experiments which can produce data, greatly limiting the area of topics that can be explored on. For example, triplicates are required for an experiment, which means experiments that deal with synthesis would be at a disadvantage cus you can't triplicate that.
What's the problem with all these is that it limits the school's growth in the area of research by a lot. People from high school come to JC thinking their project could still work only to be shot down as boring and repetitive. While other schools are doing stuff like synthesis, the people here are still doing antibacterial.
But I suppose fundamentally the problem goes down to the grading system, where project's day is an actual assessment that's graded. It is thus easier to obtain good grades by conducting experiments with immediate results and which can be replicated.
(Post is cut short due to sudden lack of motivation to continue writing and last minute panic for some other work setting in.)