By Matthew Chua

I REFER to the report, 'Why am I not top boy?' (The New Paper, 25 Nov). I can't believe that in this day and age we are still declaring top students from different races.

Why is there a need to do so when all this while we have been promoting a multi-racial society? Race is especially irrelevant and difficult to distinguish as inter-racial marriages are so common nowadays. v The correct thing to do is just to declare the top three candidates in each PSLE exam and be done with it.

You don't have to break the results down by race or even gender.

However, if the intention is to honour more students, then perhaps the top three girls and top three boys can be named. At least there won't be any confusion over the student's gender, I suppose.

I also find that the list of 60 schools with at least one student scoring 275 silly. How is the list going to be useful if there are so many schools on it?

A good list should be one with no more than 10 or 20 schools.

If the list is so long, it is probably time to raise the bar, and maybe put the score at 280.

This article was first published in The New Paper on November 27, 2008.