The academic pressure on primary school children led Teo to urge parents not to push their children too hard or over-stress them, the Straits Times reported today.

"It's not a good thing for a parent to be caning his child just because he failed his exams," the minister said during a weekend walkabout in his constituency.

Academic stress was "something schools and parents have to work at together."

Teo said the government had taken steps to reduce the workload of students, but he acknowledged that parents in the fiercely competitive city-state would not accept a total ban on homework.

"Parents will go and demand that the schools give homework, and if the schools say no, they will go to bookshops and buy assessment books," he said, summing up the attitude of families in a society which demands success.

The survey by Singapore Press Holdings, publisher of the Straits Times, found one nine-year-old who had to be stopped from jumping from the third-floor of his school because he was not doing well in class.

Another nine-year-old told of being caned after getting 83 percent in a science exam and 73 percent in a mathematics exam, and said he had become so nervous he suffered diarrhoea and asthma attacks and broke into a cold sweat before and during tests.

His mother, who makes the boy do six hours of homework a night, made no apologies for the punishment saying her son "is a clever boy who has not reached his full potential."

She said the diarrhoea would cure itself after the exams and the asthma could be controlled by medication.

Tinkle Friend, a child-help hotline in Singapore, said it took an average 1500 calls a month, mostly from primary school pupils.

The more adult Samaritans service said it still received about one call a day from a child, but "most do not threaten to commit suicide," a spokesman told the newspaper