Objective To examine the prevalence of myopia, hyperopia and other eye diseases among minority primary and secondary school students of 26 minorities in 13 province level regions in China.

Methods We extracted eyesight test data for 80 631 primary and middle school students at ages of 7–18 years from the dataset of Survey on Constitution and Health of Chinese Students conducted across China in 2014. The types of poor eyesight were detected with a group of test lenses. Chi-square test was adopted to assess the difference in eyesight between the minority students and Han students.

Results Among the minority students, the overall detection rate of poor eyesight was 38.55% and the detection rate increased with the schooling grade. Of the students, 34.00% were detected with suspected myopia, accounting for 88.20% of all the poor visions detected; 3.30% were detected with suspected hyperopia and 1.25% with other suspected poor eyesight. The proportion of girl students with poor eyesight was significantly higher than that of boy students in various schooling grades (χ² = 1 005.244, P < 0.01). The detection rate of suspected myopia was the lowest (15.69%) among primary boy students of lower grades but the highest (56.23%) among the high school girl students. The detection rate of suspected myopia, hyperopia, other poor eyesight, and all poor eyesight were much higher among the students of Tibetan (62.90%), Uygur (17.38%), Kazak (8.07%), and Tibetans (62.94%) but much lower among the students of Uygur (1.71%), Tujia/Dai/Tibetan (0%), Korean (0%), and Shui (14.01%), respectively, the differences between ethnic groups were statistically significant （χ² = 7 900.163, P < 0.001）.

Conclusion The visual acuity is significantly lower among the primary and secondary school students of 26 ethnic minorities than among the Han students in China. Tibetan primary school students and Zhuang junior and senior high school students, especially girl student, are key groups for the prevention and control of poor eyesight.