London, January 17 (ANI): An eight-year-old boy in Skopje, Macedonia, has become the world’s youngest certified Microsoft System Administrator.

Unlike other students who like to skim through comics in the break, Marko Calasan likes to read about computer-related books.

He was deemed the Mozart of Computers by the press after passing exams for IT professionals with the computer giant Microsoft.

The certificate means that, in theory, Marko is eligible to get a job maintaining complex office computer networks, even though he has not completed the third grade as yet. .

“The Microsoft officials gave me computer games and DVDs with cartoons when I passed the exams because I am a child. That was nice, but I’m not really interested in those things,” Times Online quoted young Marko as saying.

“I’d like to be a computer scientist when I grow up and create a new operational system,” added the little boy.

Marko’s parents, who are IT experts and run a computer school for children, have revealed that he had learnt to read and write at the tender age of 2, and started working on computers immediately thereafter.

Following the little boy’s success, Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski met him and presented him with an IT lab with 15 computers to practise on.

His parents are considering sending him abroad to a specialised institute of learning for gifted children, as none exists in Macedonia.

“Marko displayed exceptional learning abilities at a very early age. He was able to replicate a computer operation after only reading about it on the internet. Now we ask him for help when we have some IT related problem at work,” Marko’s mother Radica Calasan, 38, said.

She and her husband Milan, 37, also have plans to publish a book on computer education for small children based on their son’s development, which, they believe, could at least in part be replicated by other children of his age.

“He is obviously extraordinary gifted, but children above the age of 6 could learn much more about computers than generally assumed,” Calasan said.

Marko browses Internet forums for IT professionals in his spare time, and participates in debates about complex computer engineering problems.

Mathematics is his favourite subject, but he also likes physics and astronomy. (ANI)