Behind the Report Card: Academic Pressure and Mental Health in Singapore

Most people who grew up in Singapore know this feeling. The stack of assessment books on the desk, the tuition schedule that left little room for socialising or breaks, even on the weekends. The quiet arithmetic of comparing test scores, schools, and futures with their peers. For many, this was a normal routine - but what happens when we look closer at what that academic pressure actually costs?

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A System That Gets Results – At a Price

Singapore’s education system is arguably one of the best in the world, and the results speak for themselves: high literacy rates, internationally competitive graduates and a workplace that has helped build one of the most prosperous nations in Asia. However, it operates within a culture where academic success has long been equated with personal worth, family honour and future/financial security. Students cite high parental expectations, fear of failure and relentless comparison to peers as the key drivers of their stress (The Psychologist, 2025). 

What is increasingly hard to ignore, however, is what the system extracts from students in return. 

In September 2024, the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) conducted a National Youth Mental Health Study - Singapore’s largest study ever conducted. The findings were alarming: about one in three young people aged 15 to 35 reported experiencing severe or extremely severe symptoms of depression, anxiety and/or stress (Ministry of Health Singapore, 2024). Anxiety was the most common symptom, affecting 27% of youth, and was particularly prevalent among those aged between 15 and 24 years old. 

What makes these statistics especially difficult to sit with is that they are not just numbers about one group; they describe a whole generation.

The Pressure Starts Earlier Than Most Realise 

What makes Singapore’s context distinct (even when compared to the high-achieving educational cultures of East Asia) is how early the pressure begins. The PSLE, sat at the age of 12, subjects children to high-stakes academic sorting at a much younger age than in Europe, North America, or even most other Asian countries, where the first pivotal examination period typically starts between the ages of 15 and 18 (EveryChild.SG, 2025). 

The consequences show up in clinical settings where child psychologists and psychiatrists in Singapore report that approximately 50-70% of their local clients attribute academic pressure as a significant source of distress, compared to only 25-30% of their expat clients. Stress peaks for local children around the ages of 10-12 versus 16-18 for expat children (EveryChild.SG, 2025). These differences are not incidental and reflect a system in which the sorting of children begins in earnest before adolescence has even properly begun. 

A systematic review published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found consistent evidence linking academic pressure to depression, anxiety and other mental health difficulties in adolescents (Steare et al., 2023). In Singapore, that evidence is the lived reality of millions of students.

What Chronic Stress Actually Does 

Stress is not inherently harmful when it is in manageable doses. It can be used to motivate and build resilience in everyone, from young children to adults. But chronic, unrelenting stress - the kind that comes from years of high-stakes examination culture that many Singaporean children are all too familiar with, operates differently. Academic stress has emerged as a significant risk factor for mental health development during adolescence, affecting not just mood but overall development (Haritay et al., 2025). It is not the kind of stress that builds resilience. It is the kind that wears people down and the kind that professionals working with these children try to avoid (EveryChild.SG, 2025). 

The tuition industry tells a story of its own. Private tuition spending in Singapore grew from $650 million in 2008 to $1.8 billion in 2023, a 177% increase in 15 years (SGSchoolKaki, 2026). Behind these staggering figures is a generation of children whose afternoons are structured with extra tuition and hours of homework. The window for rest, sports teams, or simply making plans with friends has decreased over the years (EveryChild.SG, 2025). 

One child psychologist framed it this way: “How many opportunities do young people actually have to connect with other humans? Because they’re spending so much time in structured activities - the window of freedom has got so small” (EveryChild.SG, 2025). When excessive structured time takes precedence over the unstructured kind, it functions as what researchers have called an “experience blocker”, preventing children from engaging in the diverse real-world experiences necessary for healthy development (Haidt, 2024, as cited in EveryChild.SG, 2025).

The Deeper Cost: Identity and Self-Worth 

Perhaps the most lasting damage is not anxiety or burnout, as serious as those are. It is the way that a high-stakes examination culture shapes how young people understand and view their own worth. 

When a child internalises the message that their value is determined by their PSLE score or by what school they get into, their life’s trajectory is set by a single set of results that appear. That belief does not simply evaporate after the exam is over; it tends to stay. 

Psychologists have reported adult clients who still feel that their PSLE score “sticks to them” decades later, using it to assess their place in a social hierarchy at work (EveryChild.SG, 2025). A twelve-year-old who says she needs an AL1 or “I will be poor,” or a child who matter-of-factly reports having an elitist mindset because the system has rewarded him, is not an outlier. They are children absorbing, with uncomfortable accuracy, the values the world around them has modelled (EveryChild.SG, 2025). 

There is also the deeper psychological cost. When children come to believe that their self-worth is tied to their grades or the name of the school they attend, failure stops feeling like a normal part of learning and starts feeling like the end of the world (Asian News Network, 2025). Over time, this can erode a child’s self-confidence, their curiosity, and their willingness to take the kinds of risks that real learning requires. Too often, children’s social, physical and mental health needs are pushed aside in the pursuit of academic excellence, and in doing so, adults do not realise that they are subconsciously telling their children that their individual interests, wellbeing and developmental needs matter less than their ability to meet adult expectations (EveryChild.SG, 2025).

What Is Changing and What Is Not 

It is worth acknowledging that Singapore’s Ministry of Education has taken meaningful steps in recent years to fix this issue. Since 2023, mid-year examinations have been removed for all primary and secondary students, with junior colleges following shortly after in 2024. The shift from T-scores to Achievement Levels for the PSLE was designed to reduce the “every mark counts” mentality that had taken over. The National Mental Health and Well-Being Strategy, launched in October 2023, signals a government that is paying attention (SGSchoolKaki, 2026). 

While these are recent changes, they are genuine and important ones that are taking the necessary steps towards improving students’ mental health. However, policy shifts alone cannot undo an entire culture. When the Ministry of Education removed mid-year examinations, some parents turned to tuition centres that began offering mock mid-year exams, recreating the very pressure the system was trying to reduce (SGSchoolKaki, 2026). The anxiety found another outlet because the underlying beliefs about what children need and what they are worth had not yet shifted. 

Many families feel genuinely trapped. Parents do not operate in a vacuum. They are attuned to the values and reward structure of the society around them (EveryChild.SG, 2025). For many, the decision to push academically is not competitiveness for its own sake, it is a considered response to a system in which early sorting appears to carry long-term consequences for a child’s prospects. That is a reasonable fear operating under an unreasonable amount of pressure.

What Wellbeing Looks Like in This Context 

None of this is a call to stop caring about education. Academic engagement, curiosity and the satisfaction of genuine engagement are all deeply valuable for children and adults alike. The question is not whether to take learning seriously; it is whether the current conditions allow children to take it seriously in a way that leaves their mental health intact. 

Research consistently shows that the most protective factor for a young person’s mental health is not their academic results, it is the quality of their relationships, their sense of being genuinely seen and valued beyond their performance, and the presence of adults who remain warm and connected even when things go wrong (Redwood Psychology, 2025). Those conditions are harder to maintain when academic pressure dominates the emotional landscape of a family, a classroom, or a childhood. 

Children’s social, physical and mental health needs are being deprioritised in the pursuit of academic excellence and in doing so, the adults around them may be signalling, without realising, that those needs matter less than the ability to perform (EveryChild.SG, 2025). The long-term costs of that signal - to mental health, to self-worth, to the quality of relationships within families, are real and documented. 

The Conversation Worth Having 

Singapore is not unique in grappling with this issue. High-pressure educational cultures across East Asia are wrestling with the same tension between academic excellence and youth well-being. What is unusual here is the age at which the pressure begins, and the degree to which it has become woven into the fabric of everyday family life.

Prime Minister Wong has acknowledged that Singapore needs to move from a narrow meritocracy based solely on grades to one that is broader and more inclusive and one where education is experienced not as a burden, but as a springboard (Asian News Network, 2025). That is a shift worth working toward, in policy and in the quieter spaces of daily life.

At Care Alliance Counselling, we work with children, adolescents, and adults who are navigating the mental health effects of academic pressure, whether they are in the thick of it now, or still carrying what the system has ingrained and left behind. If you or someone you know is struggling, we are here to help.

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Kayla Pereira - Summer Intern 2026