A cross sectional study was conducted among children between 5-14 years of age attending schools in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu, India to find out the prevalence of refractive error among them. A total of 660 students were taken up for study and relevant information was collected in a pre-designed and pretested questionnaire. Children were first screened in their respective schools and those with VA<6/6 were taken for further examination to Out Patient Department of Ophthalmology, Rajah Muthiah Medical College and Hospital. Data was tabulated in MS Excel 2011 and analyzed by SPSS 20. Chi-square/ Fisher Exact test has been used to find the significance of study parameters on categorical scale between two or more groups. In this study 10.2% of the study population had refractive error, girls (14.04%) more than boys (5.78%). Myopia (6.5%) was the most common refractive error followed by astigmatism (2.3%) and hypermetropia (1.40%). These data show that vision screening in school children in developing countries is useful in early detection of refractive errors and thereby prevent development of amblyopia and visual disability.
