Top student Lysher Loh committed suicide on June 25, the start of the school term after the mid-year term break.

Her father Loh Cher Beng said his daughter had been disappointed with her mid-year examination results and had found the workload heavy.

Classmates also recalled Lysher joking she would kill herself if she did not do well at her mid-year examinations.

Lysher had told her maid Lorna Flores two weeks before her death she did not want to be reincarnated as a human being because she never wanted to have to do homework again.

Surveys of nine to 12 year-olds in the city-state have found one in three say life is not worth living because of the fear of academic failure.

Last year, a 12-year-old girl jumped from her 12th floor bedroom after failing to win a place in the higher stream of the secondary education system.