State project director of the Sarva Shikshana Abhiyan L K Atheeq has categorically refuted that the state has 7,945 schools without children, as was reported in a section of the media on Monday.

Atheeq said, the current survey showed that there were 339 schools, which were without children. Of them 236 had been closed for want of children and 103 had either been merged with a nearby school or had been revived during the 2007-08 enrollment.

The project director blamed the errors on the 2005-06 survey, “which had crept in due to software, scanning and other technical reasons”. The director also claimed that the errors had been completely rectified during the 2006-07 survey. On Monday, it was reported that the state has the maximum number of schools without children.