§3.5Success Metrics We Can't Fake
- INDEPENDENTLY GRADED · PUBLISHED EITHER WAY
Participation counts and willingness surveys measure consent to begin, and they remain exactly that – tests for launch (Part VI). The programme itself is graded, by the independent evaluator, on outcomes no press release can manufacture:
| Metric | Target | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| Sustained hawker-years | ≥40 by end Yr 5 | Cumulative years of post-programme stall operation across all graduates and Fellows' successors. |
| Graduate retention | ≥70% at 5 yrs | Graduates running a stall five years after opening it. There are two HDP starting points, not one. Of the 566 who finished classroom training, 29 started a stall in a hawker centre (5%); of those 29, 16 still operate (55%) (MSE, Jul 2024; the reply counts hawker-centre stalls only, so a trainee who opened in a coffeeshop is not in either figure). Version 1.2 set ≥60% against the first; against the 55%, 60% would hardly be ambitious, so the target rises to 70%, for graduates who open with a package the HDP's did not have. A third starting point is the Incubation Stall Programme's: 37 of 99 stalls allocated by June 2025 became full hawkers (MSE, 2025), up from 8 of 34 in 2021 (MSE, 10 May 2021). |
| Young cooks coming through | ≥2 practitioners under 45 | For every dish at the top rescue priority (Priority 1) in the Endangered Dish Registry, by end Year 5. |
| Graduate income | Median ≥$3,400/mo net | At month 24, after the income top-up ends. The evaluator also reports take-home per hour worked – preparation and cleaning included – so a cheap meal is never quietly subsidised by invisible hours. |
| Trust index | ≥60% agree | "This institution is on our side" – annual anonymous hawker survey, published verbatim. |
| Hawker health | Published yearly; target once the first year's count is in | Days a year each enrolled stall closes for illness or injury; musculoskeletal pain on the standard Nordic questionnaire; MediSave status and cover held; by age band, at each pilot centre (§2.11.2). The first year is the starting point: no study of Singapore hawkers' own health exists to set a target against. |
| Movement, not snapshots | Published yearly, against comparable centres | Stalls opened; stalls closed within three years; how long a vacant stall takes to let; hand-overs with a successor in place; and every closure by its stated reason, health among them. Each is published as a spread by stall and centre type, never by stall (§2.10). |
For the policymaker, this table is the political insurance: whatever is announced at launch, the only numbers that will matter in five years are these – and they are designed to be checkable by anyone with a copy of the evaluator's report and an appetite.