Question

The visual acuity used as cut off for differentiating "normal" from "abnormal" children in the School Vision Screening Programme in India is:

• A. 6/6.
• B. 6/9.
• C. 6/12.
• D. 6/60.

Hint:

School screening needs a practical cut-off, not perfect 6/6 or a very poor 6/60; India's programme uses 6/9.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

This question is about the practical vision cut-off used in India's School Vision Screening Programme, and it is worth noting that the original scanned answer key itself carries a question mark next to its stated answer, a sign the paper's own compilers were unsure. Let's reason through the options instead of trusting that flagged key.

1. 6/6: this is the ideal, perfect reading, not a workable pass mark for a quick mass screening test, since many healthy children will not hit an exact 6/6 on a single test under field conditions. Using it would over-refer huge numbers of normal children.
2. 6/9: this is one line below perfect and is the standard used in India's school screening programme. A child seeing worse than 6/9 in either eye is referred for a full eye check. It is strict enough to catch real, correctable problems, yet forgiving enough not to flood eye centres with false referrals.
3. 6/12: this line is looser than the real programme cut-off and would let some children with a genuine early refractive error slip through as "normal."
4. 6/60: this is a very poor level of vision, close to what is used to define low vision or blindness in adults, not a sensible line for flagging mild childhood refractive error. A screening cut-off this low would let many children with real, correctable vision problems pass through undetected.

Only 6/9 fits the actual working definition used in current Indian school eye screening practice, even though the source key was marked with a question mark against a different option.

Let's summarize:

• School vision screening needs a cut-off that is strict enough to catch real problems but practical for mass testing, which rules out both 6/6 and 6/60.
• India's School Vision Screening Programme uses 6/9 in either eye as the normal versus abnormal line.

So the correct cut-off is 6/9.