One moth­er has bro­ken her si­lence on what the ex­pe­ri­ence of her son ad­mit­ting to self harm has been like.

On Mon­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion not­ed an in­crease in Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion self-harm cas­es.

The woman told Guardian Me­dia it was dif­fi­cult to wit­ness her son buck­le un­der the pres­sure of the place­ment test.

Speak­ing un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, the moth­er said the day af­ter the ex­am this year will for­ev­er be etched in her mem­o­ry.

“I went to work and when I got back home, he came up to me and said mom I want to die and I couldn’t un­der­stand why and then he showed me what he did to his body,” she said.

The moth­er said her son ad­mit­ted to in­flict­ing self-harm be­cause he felt like a fail­ure and be­lieved he had not done well at the ex­am.

In re­cent times, ques­tions have sur­faced over the lev­el of stress caused by the ex­am, how­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia main­tained the ex­am was not the root of stu­dents’ anx­i­ety but rather pres­sure placed by par­ents.

The moth­er said there was a per­cep­tion that schools oth­er than those con­sid­ered pres­ti­gious were deemed un­fit and un­wor­thy of your child, “so if the min­is­ter seemed to en­sure that all these oth­er schools were at a cer­tain cal­i­bre par­ents won’t have is­sues with chil­dren get­ting in­to those schools”.

She said it was ex­treme­ly im­por­tant for per­sons to speak out.

“I was afraid at first be­cause of the stig­ma at­tached to it but there are oth­er par­ents go­ing through a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion as I am, and we need to fo­cus on our chil­dren”.

Chair­man of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Hanif Ben­jamin al­so called for the con­ver­sa­tion to cen­tre around the child’s well-be­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Ben­jamin, “We turn the SEA in­to this bru­tal com­pe­ti­tion and to be hon­est with you, chil­dren shouldn’t have to go through that. Chil­dren shouldn’t have to be fight­ing for their dear lives at 10 and 11.”

Ben­jamin said when pres­sure is placed on chil­dren it in­tro­duces them to trau­ma which “caus­es them to be dis­ap­point­ed in them­selves, there­by cut­ting and oth­er self-mu­ti­la­tion. They are made to feel as though they dis­ap­point their par­ents who pres­sured them and the third com­po­nent is the pres­sure of the school who wants to be in the me­dia for be­ing known as the top school”.

Ben­jamin was hope­ful that the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty can en­gage in meet­ing with all stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss ways to ad­dress con­cerns that con­tin­ue to sur­face from the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion.