Wuhan Morning Post apologized on Monday, saying that a report it carried about a well-known story being dropped from a new edition of a textbook was not true.

The report, published in last Saturday's paper, said the story "Father's Back" had been excluded from the latest edition of the Chinese textbook by Hubei's provincial education authority.

The decision was made after a survey showed that more than 75 per cent of students found fault with the story, specifically with the father, who violated traffic rules by crossing railway lines illegally, according to the report.

The prose piece, written by famed author Zhu Ziqing, has impressed a generation of students with its vivid description of a father seeing his son off at a railway station.

The textbook-compiling panel said the story, which they considered a model text, had not been dropped and was included in the grade eight textbook.

The panel also said that no survey had been conducted as claimed in the report.

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