The MOE had earlier announced that the Mobile Guardian application would be removed from all students’ personal learning devices following a global cyber security breach affecting 13,000 secondary school students from 26 secondary schools in Singapore.

Students had their devices remotely wiped by the perpetrator, and many worried about losing access to their notes as exams approached.

Mobile Guardian is a device management app that is installed on personal learning devices used by students. It enables parents to manage students’ device usage by limiting applications or websites and screen time.

MOE said on Wednesday that additional IT engineers have been deployed to schools to help students recover their devices.

“Students who want to troubleshoot their devices have also been provided with instruction sheets. We aim to reach the rest of the affected devices by the end of next week.”

The students who spoke to the CNA earlier about the Mobile Guardian incident have recovered their notes.

Mitchell (not his real name), a Secondary 2 student at Riverside Secondary School, said the school announced on Thursday morning that personal learning devices would be reset over the next two weeks.

He told CNA that while he is still waiting for his iPad to be restored, many other classes have already started the process.

Esther (not her real name), a Secondary 4 student at Methodist Girls School, said IT engineers working with the MOE visited the school on Thursday.

She was able to find her notes after using her personal Apple ID to re-download the note-taking app.

“Fortunately, all the documents were still inside,” he said.

“(I’m) relieved and very happy that we can get it back, which means we don’t have to rewrite our notes. I personally … felt like a weight had been lifted off me. The weight has been lifted.”