In December 2025, a Class 6 student from Thane, Maharashtra, died after jumping from her 19th-floor residence. Police officials noted that the child was under severe academic stress and was distressed over her inability to improve her marks.
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Sneha Jha
In December 2025, a Class 6 student from Thane, Maharashtra, died after jumping from her 19th-floor residence. Police officials noted that the child was under severe academic stress and was distressed over her inability to improve her marks, despite consistent efforts to study. This incident has once again highlighted the growing mental health crisis among school students in India.
According to National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data, a total of 13,892 students died by suicide in 2023. The report also cited “failure in examination” as the main cause of suicides among children below 18. A 2025 NCERT survey further reveals that over 80 percent of students at the middle and secondary levels experience anxiety related to exams and results.
Paired with the current academic assessment, education is increasingly becoming a source of fear and emotional strain for students. Rather than supporting growth, the pressure of high-stakes examinations, especially Board exams in Grades 10 and 12, has turned assessment into a judgement of a child’s future. For many families, these exams are treated as life-altering moments, creating an environment of relentless stress that has, in tragic cases, led to irreversible consequences, undermining the very purpose of education.
Recognising this, the National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023 advocated a shift away from an exam-centric approach towards holistic and continuous assessment. When assessment is integrated into the learning process through formative practices, such as observing classroom behaviour and using projects, debates, experiments and portfolios, it enables teachers to respond to students as learners rather than rank-holders. When framed as a non-threatening tool for reflection and self-improvement as ‘assessment as learning’, it becomes developmental rather than punitive. This shift makes education more humane, meaningful and effective.
The introduction of the Holistic Progress Card by NCERT reflects this intent. By including social, emotional and behavioural dimensions alongside academics, it acknowledges that children are more than their marks. Yet, despite these reforms, the lived reality in most classrooms remains unchanged. Assessment is still largely perceived through numbers, percentages and rankings. Policy has moved forward, but practice lags.
One reason for this gap lies beyond schools. Parents and teachers play a decisive role in shaping how children experience education, largely influencing their confidence and self-worth. Research on student mental health in India indicate that parental expectations significantly contribute to academic stress, often driving students to prolonged study hours to secure high marks. When a young person excels in sports, arts, or other nonacademic pursuits, the achievement is often met with pride, but also with an unspoken expectation that academic success must follow. In the absence of high marks, such accomplishments quietly lose their value. This leaves little room to acknowledge the varied talents, interests and identities that young people are in the process of discovering.
Building a fearless classroom requires reimagining what success truly means by each of us. Parents can look beyond marks and rankings to understand their child’s growth, interests and wellbeing. School teachers and principals can design education programmes which centre student wellbeing, and communities have to recognise that there are diverse pathways to success and not all of them are defined by academic scores.
Employers, too, have a role to play. Till academic scores dominate hiring decisions, the pressure on schools and families will persist. Recruitment practices that prioritise skills, adaptability and real-world experience over marks can send a powerful signal about what truly matters beyond school.
Creating a healthier education system requires collective accountability. If failure exists today, it does not belong to children, it belongs to a society that continues to measure young people with narrow and short-term standards. The question we must confront is not who failed, but how long we will continue to fail our children.
(The writer is an Associate Lead–National Partnerships at Dream a Dream, bringing over a decade of experience in shaping youth development and child rights through law, policy, and education. Her work involves close collaboration with central government agencies to design and implement education policy priorities, including Social and Emotional Learning. She holds a Master’s degree in Development (Public Policy) from Azim Premji University)