Meanwhile in Dujiangyan City, a city government official told Xinhua that the government would severely punish those responsible if they found quality problems at the Juyuan Middle School. About 900 students and teachers were buried when their classrooms collapsed and about 240 were confirmed dead.

The city government set up an investigation team and met with parents of the deceased students.

As of May 14, the quake was known to have left 6,898 school buildings in ruins, excluding those in Wenchuan and Beichuan counties. Further information about student casualties and destroyed schools was not immediately available, said Sichuan government spokesman Hou Xiongfei.

Old buildings, and too little time

On Sunday, Sichuan began investigating school building collapses. The Educational Department of Sichuan Province on Wednesday blamed design defects and obsolete buildings as reasons for the many collapses.

Another reason was that the quake exceeded the buildings' designed capacity. In addition, the quake occurred during class hours, so that buildings were full -- too full to be evacuated within the few seconds that it took for many buildings to collapse.

Yin Zhi, deputy dean of the School of Architecture of Tsinghua University in Beijing, has visited collapsed schools several times and said that further analysis was needed to determine the cause of these building failures.

"So long as the rubble stays there, we can take samples and make a judgement on the quality of the building."

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has ordered local authorities to investigate why schools collapsed in the earthquake.

"School buildings should use structures that meet engineering and construction standards as well as local requirements on quake-resistance," said Yang Rong, director of the ministry's department of standards and norms.

The Ministry of Education had also ordered a strict check of school construction, especially in disaster areas and regions susceptible to quakes, ministry spokesman Wang Xuming told a press conference on Monday.

"We will cooperate with investigations by other authorities. If investigations show that shoddy work was responsible for the collapse of any school buildings, the offenders will be severely punished."