I have many classmates and colleagues who were in top 1000 in their graduation year in China or India. Percentile wise, these are all gifted by Singapore standard. I guess Singapore gifted program entrance exam covers math, English and other subjects, so perhaps these friends would’t pass every subject, but a kid is really gifted in one subject only. Compare

Student A: top 0.01% on one subject (say, Math) and above average in other subjects
Student B: top 0.1% across the age group, but his strongest subject score is only 1st percentile. (I think this is a realistic example due to probability)

Between A and B, who is more like gifted?

In my humble opinion, Math, Physics, logical abstract reasoning and memory capacity are easy to assess as in IQ tests. English, Chinese and all other subjects are hard to test for giftedness.

I don’t think the so-called gifted program in Singapore means a lot. It means the kid is bright by some narrow-scoped academic standard.

少年班 was discontinued in China long ago.