What is the Public Choice Award?
The Public Choice Award gives schools an opportunity to engage a wider audience and showcase their achievements through a public voting process. This award complements the main GBA School Awards by offering a platform for community support and recognition.
How Does It Work?
Participation Fee: $500 USD
Once your awards submission is received and shortlisted, we will reach out to confirm your participation in the Public Choice Award, which will incur a $500USD participation fee. (Note that the initial express of interest and submission to the other awards category are completely free of charge). This includes a tailored promotional package designed to highlight your entry:
- Listing on the Public Choice Voting Form (max. 3 schools/companies per category)
- Website feature on the GBA School Awards platform
- Email announcement to our GBA School Awards mailing list
- Promotion on LinkedIn, Facebook, X (Twitter), and BlueSky
- Distribution via awards partners and networks
- Inclusion in a regional press release to education media across Asia
*In last year’s campaign, the Public Choice Award attracted over 3,000 public votes, giving shortlisted schools a powerful visibility boost.
Selection & Recognition
There will be three Public Choice Award winners for each individual award category. Winners will be determined by the highest average score received through the public voting form.
Interested?
Submit your application to an award category here and express your interest to join the Public Choice Award when submitting.
For further information, please contact us at info@21c-learning.com
How Do We Count The Votes?
Public Choice Awards 2026: Scoring Integrity & FAQ
How is the final winner determined?
To ensure the Public Choice Award is a true reflection of community sentiment and quality, we do not use a “simple average” or a “total vote count.” Instead, we use a Verified Fair Scoring System. This system combines Unique IP Filtering with a Bayesian Weighted Average.
Why don’t you just count every vote?
In public voting awards, “raw counts” can be easily skewed by “burst voting”— where a single person or a small group uses a computer lab or multiple devices to submit hundreds of votes at once. To prevent this, we use Unique IP Filtering.
- The Rule: Only one vote per network connection (IP address) is counted toward the final score.
- The Result: This ensures that a school or company cannot “spam” the results and that every community has a fair, level playing field regardless of how many devices they have access to in one location.
What is a "Bayesian Average" and why do you use it?
The Bayesian Average is a sophisticated mathematical formula used by platforms like IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes to rank items fairly.
If we used a simple average, a candidate with only two “10-star” votes from friends would beat a candidate with 500 votes and a “9.5-star” average. The Bayesian Average fixes this by “weighting” the score based on the number of votes received.
- It requires a candidate to have a solid volume of votes before their score can move significantly higher or lower.
- It effectively balances Quality (the rating) with Certainty (how many unique people voted).
How do you handle "Tactical Voting" (1-star or 10-star spam)?
We noticed that some participants give “10 stars” to their favorite and “1 star” to everyone else to “tank” the competition. Our system is designed to be resilient against this:
- Unique IP Filtering removes the ability for one person to submit multiple “1-star” votes.
- The Weighted Formula focuses on the “consensus” of the crowd. Extremes (outliers) have less impact on the final Fair Score than a consistent trend of high ratings from hundreds of different people.
Is this system fair for smaller companies or schools?
Yes. In fact, this system is specifically designed to protect smaller entrants. A smaller company doesn’t need 1,000 votes to win; they just need high-quality, authentic engagement from their community. Because we remove “burst” votes from larger organizations and use a weighted average, a small school with a very passionate, genuine following can compete head-to-head with a massive institution.
Who calculated these results?
The results were audited and processed using data-science modeling to identify and remove duplicate entries, cluster-voting patterns, and statistical outliers, ensuring that the final trophy goes to the candidate truly valued by the public.
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