By Santokh Singh

CONGRATULATIONS to all the schools listed in the Ministry of Education's annual roll of honour this year.

They include those who made the rankings and banding list and those who won the numerous awards for best practices in the various categories.

Others were recognised for holistic character development of their pupils and for outstanding national education programmes.

While we celebrate these achievements, it may be timely to step back and look at how we achieved them.

There is talk that some schools may have gone beyond basic educational principles to achieve these awards.

There are some questions that schools should ask themselves.

Did they overload their students with more work than necessary to make the list?

Are their teachers and students subjected to more than one timetable in a day? After the official workday from 7.30am to about 1pm, some schools have two more unofficial ones for the afternoon and night.

Yes, as The New Paper found out on our walkabouts, some schools have the graduating classes and their teachers stay in school from 7.30am to 9pm.

Next, the schools have to ask themselves if they have over-tested their students to the point that they burn out and lose interest in their studies.

Some schools have mock exams before the preliminary examinations, others have two prelims followed by more tests before the national examinations. For them, testing goes on year-round, almost on a weekly basis.

The New Paper found out that some schools also conducted either mock examinations or preliminaries during the recent school term break.

Some parents may be thankful to these schools for 'baby-sitting' their children while they are at work or enjoying an evening out. But let's not assume that all parents are happy to abdicate their roles as care-givers.

Don't forget, too, that teachers, some of whom are parents themselves, have their own lives to lead.

They spend hours on end preparing for lessons, setting class work, tests and examination papers and then marking these assignments to help their schools win these awards.

They also supervise co-curricular activities and fill in forms for the School Excellence Models which are used as a basis for these awards.

Let's hope that they, too, do not burn out in this pursuit of awards.

This article was first published in The New Paper.