A few days ago, I on a train at Tampines, I saw a student from Coral Secondary School giving up his seat to an elderly man. This made me think a lot about how neighbourhood school students are deemed by society.

Firstly, many people will think of a student with long hair, ankle socks who fails his exams at the time. Simply because he is a neighbourhood student. Why is this so? People always overlook the fact that maybe they came from low-income families and always had to help to look after their siblings while their parents go to work. How would they have time to study? I know a few students from neighbourhood schools myself. They are not those type of students who hang out at shopping malls all day long, but are decent people who just did not happen to do so well for their PSLE examinations.

Secondly, people assume that students from neighbourhood schools will become bums and end up in jail because they broke laws. However, let's ask ourselves: are there really no such people in other schools? I can quote you an example at once: the respected monk once from RI embezzled company funds, didn't he?

Thus, I hope people will stop stereotyping neighbourhood students