Dear Mei,

Let me start by congratulating you. You have done extremely well and should feel proud.

While you may feel the system has been unfair to you, there is nothing wrong in finishing second. Not many students can boast of that achievement.

Don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting resignation to your fate or a sense of complacency.

It is nice to know you want to be first. Ambition is not a dirty word.

But wouldn't you feel a greater sense of achievement if you were to beat any competition you face, regardless of age?

Some students in your level may be older, but not necessarily academically better. Otherwise, they would not be in that level.

So face the competition squarely on the chin, beat it and double your joy.

Allow me to share my experience when I was teaching in one of Singapore's top all-boys school some years ago.

We too had a group of foreigners competing with local students.They were Asean scholars, mainly from Malaysia, studying with some of our best and brightest.

They were good sportsmen and played key roles in their schools' prefectorial board and monitors' council. Most had at least one other CCA and held offices. And most were top students almost annually.

I asked one what made the scholars so different from the cream of our crop?

His reply gave me food for thought: "Sir, the problem with Singapore students is that they perceive themselves to be in a pressure cooker which has yet to be switched on.

"They all claim to be in this pressure cooker, made hotter by our presence, and do nothing but talk about it. I don?t think the competition is really that tough if they were to get down to it."

It was a challenge thrown by a foreign talent to the local boys.

I decided to use this to spur them on and I?m happy to say they rose to the challenge.

Both the foreigners and the locals, in raising their game, did well.

The school also benefited, recording its best-ever ranking in the annual school ranking exercise - an outright sixth spot at a time when ranking was calculated down to the last digit and schools were not banded in groups.

Every boy in that school became a winner because of foreign competition.

Yours in Education,
Santokh Singh
santokh@sph.com.sg

This article was first published in The New Paper on May 15, 2008.