On 15 December 2022, the President convened a meeting with affiliated RG Clubs to develop alignment and key strategies that would unite the RG Community. After the meeting, the Board requested that the Rhythmic Gymnastics Technical Advisory Council (TAC) discuss and develop key strategies or actions around improving the judging and judging processes for RG events.

Throughout February 2023, the TAC was busy working through the task.

Prior to the TAC taking on the task, it was acknowledged that Singapore Gymnastics has continued to work hard over the past few years to address the perceived intentional biasness and unintentional judging errors that occur in competitions. 

The key strategies undertaken to date are:

• Source and implement a new scoring system which can support all our disciplines, and which can be used to track judges’ scores, scoring trends, and judging quality at SG events.
• Review the judge education framework to ensure appropriate levels of judges throughout the system, as well as increase the numbers of judges overall.
• Be transparent in the allocation of judges in competition.
• Provide professional development sessions to improve judging competency.

The TAC further developed a comprehensive set of strategies to address conscious and unconscious biasness in judging. Some of these strategies are already in progress or have been fully executed, while others will need to be implemented in the future.

The strategies proposed by the RG TAC include transparency in the allocation of judges, the implementation of a superior jury at higher level competitions, and the development of guiding principles for the composition of judging panels. Of particular importance is the implementation of a Conflict-of-Interest declaration for judges prior to each competition.  The TAC also plans to implement a strategy for clubs to develop judges and work towards equal representation on judging panels.

To ensure that judges are held accountable for their decisions, the TAC will look to use the scoring system to analyse judges' scores after each competition and develop an action plan to further educate or sanction judges if necessary. The TAC also plans to increase coaches’ education so coaches better understand and align with the judging feedback system. Additionally, judges will be encouraged to attend professional development workshops and participate in on-the-job training to improve judging competency. To date, there has been 2 such workshops held on 13 and 27 February 2023 that saw 34 attendees. The participation of judges at such development workshops will progressively be made compulsory. 

The TAC will also work to actively promote the judges' code of conduct and work to build respect for current judges within the community. A key aspect of this will be the education of coaches, clubs, and parents on how the judges score and the panel operate so they can have a better understanding. Some of this will be through the development of easy FAQs. These strategies can also be effective in building a more respectful and collaborative community.

Overall, these strategies show a commitment to transparency, fairness, and continuous improvement in the RG judging system.

Singapore Gymnastics would like to extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the Rhythmic Gymnastics TAC for their time and efforts in uniting the community.