Each year, when examination results are declared, schools across India repeat a troubling ritual. The faces of children who have scored the highest marks are displayed prominently—on school websites, hoardings, brochures, and sometimes in full-page newspaper advertisements. What should be a private moment of academic achievement is turned into a public spectacle.
The intention is rarely subtle. This is not quiet celebration. It is publicity.
Children are placed at the centre of marketing campaigns designed to attract admissions and enhance institutional brand value. The child becomes the proof point. The school becomes the beneficiary.
This practice deserves serious scrutiny.
Schools often justify these displays by claiming they are “celebrating excellence” or “motivating students.” But the scale, design, and placement of these advertisements tell another story. If recognition were the real objective, it would not require glossy layouts, paid newspaper space, or repeated public display.
What we are witnessing is commerce, not pedagogy.
When achievement is used as advertising material, celebration quietly gives way to exploitation. The distinction matters.
This practice has little to do with celebration and everything to do with business. It is marketing dressed up as merit.
It must also be said plainly that the biggest and most aggressive culprits are private coaching centres. What schools do is troubling enough; what coaching institutes do is far worse.
These centres routinely plaster the faces and ranks of children across billboards, bus shelters, newspaper ads, and social media campaigns. A child’s result is reduced to a sales pitch. One student’s name is used to imply guaranteed success for thousands of others. The human cost is invisible; the commercial intent is unmistakable.
This is not education. It is exploitation.
That such practices are widely accepted, and even admired, should worry us deeply.
There is another cost that schools rarely acknowledge: the psychological burden placed on the very children they claim to celebrate.
Publicly branding a child as a “topper” immediately raises expectations. Every future examination becomes a test of reputation. Fear of slipping replaces curiosity. Learning slowly shifts from understanding to performance management.
Instead of mastering ideas, children begin to chase positions. Instead of enjoying learning, they worry about maintaining rank.
This is not excellence. It is anxiety.
Public celebration of a handful of students also sends a powerful message to the rest. It suggests that learning is a race with only a few winners, and that worth is measured narrowly by marks and ranks.
Children who have worked hard but fallen short of the top are rendered invisible. Those with strengths in creativity, collaboration, leadership, or problem-solving receive little recognition. A school begins to resemble a podium rather than a community.
Education should enlarge confidence, not shrink it. Recognition does matter. Encouragement matters. But the form recognition takes matters just as much.
Public advertising is among the poorest ways to motivate learning because it ties self-worth to comparison and visibility. There are far more thoughtful and humane ways to acknowledge achievement.
Better systems already exist.Recognition can be private rather than public—through personal letters, certificates, or conversations that acknowledge effort and growth. Achievement can be rewarded with opportunities rather than exposure—advanced reading groups, mentorships, projects, or academic enrichment.
Schools can celebrate improvement, perseverance, and intellectual risk-taking, not just final scores. They can honour collective achievement rather than singling out individuals. Most importantly, they can allow students and families to decide if and how achievements are shared.
Such approaches affirm learning without commodifying it.
At its heart, this is not merely an administrative issue. It is an ethical one.
Schools occupy a position of trust. Parents entrust them not only with education, but with the emotional and psychological well-being of their children. Turning students into advertising material—however normalised the practice may have become—betrays that trust.
The measure of a school is not how loudly it announces success, but how carefully it protects the dignity of its learners.
If we truly believe education is about nurturing minds rather than selling outcomes, then it is time to end this practice.
Children are not billboards.