When Kai received the SME AI Impact Award in the Adoption category from Minister Mrs Josephine Teo on behalf of Lil’ but Mighty, it was a proud moment for our entire team.
Behind the award were colleagues who asked questions, experimented with unfamiliar tools, reviewed their work and tried again. There were late nights and weekends spent preparing, refining processes and bringing ideas to life. There were also many smaller contributions made alongside the everyday responsibilities of teaching students, supporting parents and keeping our centres running.
To everyone who played a part: thank you. We are mighty proud of what we have achieved together.
A journey built on everyday improvements
Our AI journey began with a practical question: How can we help our team spend less time on repetitive work and more time on work that benefits from their expertise and care?
Across operations, administration, curriculum development, training and teaching, we began exploring where AI could make a meaningful difference.
One example is the creation of visual stimuli for Oral and Situational Writing resources. Previously, our curriculum team would source suitable clipart, piece together different elements or work with a graphic designer. Often, they had to adapt their ideas to the images available.
AI has helped the team create visuals that more closely match the intended learning scenario. This has reduced preparation time and given us greater flexibility in designing resources around our students’ learning needs.
Our educators continue to guide that process. They decide what a resource should teach, assess whether the output is suitable and refine the details. The technology supports their work; their professional judgement determines its quality.
An opportunity to reflect on how far we have come
Preparing for the award gave us a valuable opportunity to pause and examine our progress.
The application and onsite assessment required us to explain our journey clearly: what we had introduced, how our workflows had changed, what improvements we had observed and where further work was needed.
During the onsite visit, the assessors’ curiosity and thoughtful questions encouraged us to reflect more deeply on our choices. It was also an opportunity to showcase the colleagues behind the changes and hear them explain their work in their own words.
That mattered to us. One reason we entered the awards was to recognise our team’s hard work and celebrate how far they had come.
Recognising the effort behind the award
Adopting new ways of working takes time, patience and a willingness to learn.
We want to acknowledge the colleagues who worked late into the night and over weekends, both on the improvements themselves and on preparations for the assessment. We recognise that this involved personal time and effort, and we do not take it for granted.
We are equally grateful to those who tested a workflow, spotted an error, offered feedback or helped a teammate become more confident. These contributions have helped turn individual experiments into practices that others can use.
As we improve our systems, our responsibility is to make that progress sustainable, with better support, clearer processes and time for our team to learn.
What comes next for Lil’ but Mighty
This award is a timely affirmation as we close Academic Year 2026 and prepare for Academic Year 2027. It gives us encouragement to keep improving, alongside a responsibility to remain thoughtful about how we innovate.
We will continue developing systems that support our team and our growing franchise network. Our aim is to make useful tools and effective practices easier to share across centres, helping our colleagues and franchisees deliver consistent support for students and parents.
We are also working towards training and workshops for students, educators and other businesses.
For students, we hope to build the judgement to use AI thoughtfully while continuing to develop their own thinking, creativity and language skills. For educators, we want to share practical approaches to preparing resources and improving workflows while maintaining educational quality. For businesses, we hope to share lessons from our own experience, including the challenges, adjustments and people support that adoption requires.
There is still much to learn and build. We move forward encouraged by this recognition, grateful for our team and excited about the possibilities ahead.
To everyone who has been part of this journey: this achievement belongs to you, too.
