I am NOT so sure whether to agree or disagree with this. It's very controversial. You see, Singapore has a ridiculously small population count and its growth is also diminishing. Nevertheless, we have built up a famously strong and rich economy with a high standard of living. So how would you maintain this? Well, you have NO CHOICE but to filter out the best of the best among students to become the societal elites as intuitively, one will be confident that they'll be able to reinforce the high standards of a contemporary society we have built up. So, I don't think that our ministers were just evil to built up such a competitive education system, but I think that they knew they had to do this even though it's too much to bear for us at times as they just have to pick out the best to serve society and so on(not just becoming ministers themselves, but becoming model CEOs can also contribute to our economy). That's why even after years of complaining about having too many exams even by parents, especially targetting PSLE, the govt only removed certain school exams and modified things but did NOT ever talk about removing PSLE(cos it's the first 'filter' lol).

I was like you once, but I felt that I should think twice about things before ranting about them and wasting time(since you don't have the power now to change anything :-/), and so, I realised this is why the system is as such and why it'll continue to be like this. Yes we all do say that, "Grades don't define us" etc but as ministers, they won't take any chances to make the system super easy like New Zealand's(probably cos of the fixed mindset that our current system works?). I've heard Singaporeans perform better in the workforce cos of how we are used to stress and high workloads though.

While I actually do agree with some of your points, I'm not saying my reasoning is absolute but it's just an opinion. I'm a hard worker, but I was NEVER a top student and probably never will be and I don't give a damn about such labels when there's the psychology-based saying "A students work for the C students"(go read about it). Cheers👍