Accident At School: How To Claim Compensation For Your Child’s Injury

How to claim compensation for child injury in an accident at school. Both on and off the school premises.

Discover the extra safety precautions that should be taken to avoid your child having an accident at school; the most common types of school accident your child might suffer whilst at school; accidents off the school premises that your child’s school are responsible for – with access to our specialist solicitor free help both online and over the phone.

Table of Contents

Accident At School: How To Claim Compensation For Your Child’s Injury
- What safety precautions should a school take to avoid accidents?

What safety precautions should a school take to avoid accidents?

A school has a very large duty to take care to avoid injury to children in accidents.

Your child is expected to be inquisitive, not fully aware of the dangers of many activities and not necessarily to take proper care of his/her own safety.

Precautions should be taken to keep your child safe at all times. However, this duty is counterbalanced by it being in the interests of your child to play with other children, which will have some inherent risks.

Younger Children
The younger your child the more precautions should be taken. Younger children are less able to assess potential risks.

What are the most common types of school accident?

The most common types of accident at school include:

child accident school — Accident At School

Accident involving your child using equipment in the playground

The equipment provided by a school must be properly maintained, so as to prevent dangerous defects. Equipment should also be age appropriate (take into account the age of your child and the risk of injury).

Consider a climbing frame that has rusted and become sharp at the edges, which can cause children to be cut. Alternatively – climbing frames may be too high for children of certain ages (as set out in the manufacturers guidelines). There should also be appropriate soft flooring under the climbing frame should a child slip and fall.

Climbing frame accident

Example Of School Playground Climbing Frame Accident
Imagine your son is using the climbing frame at school and slips landing badly breaking his arm. The school argues that children must be able to play, there are unavoidable dangers of providing equipment like climbing frames and no amount of supervision could have protected your son from this fall. Albeit the points made by the school are to a certain degree valid. We all want our children to be able to have fun, but we also want them to be as safe as possible. The climbing frame should not be too high and very importantly the surface under the climbing frame should be able to cushion the fall of your child. Modern surfaces include a kind of rubber which will cushion the fall of a child – previously bark was used to have the same effect. Despite the fact that your son broke his arm in the fall suggests that the climbing frame was too tall and the surface under the climbing frame was inadequate. It is down to the Claimant – here the child (via the parents as litigation friends and a solicitor) – to prove that the school were at fault. This might mean checking the manufacturers guidelines for suitable age groups and inspecting the site to see the type of surface under the climbing frame itself..

Example Of School Playground Climbing Frame Accident

Imagine your son is using the climbing frame at school and slips landing badly breaking his arm. The school argues that children must be able to play, there are unavoidable dangers of providing equipment like climbing frames and no amount of supervision could have protected your son from this fall.
Albeit the points made by the school are to a certain degree valid. We all want our children to be able to have fun, but we also want them to be as safe as possible. The climbing frame should not be too high and very importantly the surface under the climbing frame should be able to cushion the fall of your child.
Modern surfaces include a kind of rubber which will cushion the fall of a child – previously bark was used to have the same effect.
Despite the fact that your son broke his arm in the fall suggests that the climbing frame was too tall and the surface under the climbing frame was inadequate. It is down to the Claimant – here the child (via the parents as litigation friends and a solicitor) – to prove that the school were at fault.
This might mean checking the manufacturers guidelines for suitable age groups and inspecting the site to see the type of surface under the climbing frame itself..

Flooring defects

The school must keep the school premises safe from flooring defects.

For example:

Holes in the playground surface. This can cause children of all ages to trip and fall.
Walkways inside the school and classroom flooring being wet and slippery. You might expect outdoor playing areas, such as grass to be slippery – but indoor flooring should be kept free of spillages and suitable surfaces should be used to prevent slipping.
The school may identify an issue and put out a cone. Granted to prevent injury to adults a cone is normally sufficient to warn of a slippery surface. However, for a young child a warning cone may not be sufficient. Perhaps some form of shield to bar a child’s access would be better.

Dangerous school playing fields

A school should take proper precautions to ensure the playing fields are safe and free from danger.

Example Of Dangerous School Playing Fields
Consider a child who was cut by glass whilst playing rugby on the school playing fields during PE. Vandals were known to enter the school after hours and maliciously embed glass into the grass on the rugby pitch close to the touchline. The school was aware of this and the head teacher direction was for the PE teacher to check the fields before each game. During a rugby game – whilst a young child was scoring a try when he was badly cut. Here the school is likely to be liable to pay compensation ti the injured child. The school knew of the problem with the vandals and should have checked the rugby pitch properly before playing a rugby game to avoid an accident occurring.

Example Of Dangerous School Playing Fields

Consider a child who was cut by glass whilst playing rugby on the school playing fields during PE.
Vandals were known to enter the school after hours and maliciously embed glass into the grass on the rugby pitch close to the touchline.
The school was aware of this and the head teacher direction was for the PE teacher to check the fields before each game.
During a rugby game – whilst a young child was scoring a try when he was badly cut.
Here the school is likely to be liable to pay compensation ti the injured child.
The school knew of the problem with the vandals and should have checked the rugby pitch properly before playing a rugby game to avoid an accident occurring.

Acts of children on other children causing injury

Unfortunately, if injury is caused by one child to another – it is often that the school will not have liability. It is considered in the interests of the children to interact with other children and this can be dangerous.

Liability may however attach to the school – if children were allowed to play with unsuitable items.

Example Of Dangerous Play
For example – following strong winds it was known that slate tiles were found on the school playing fields. Children were known to be throwing the tiles during play time. A child is struck by a wayward thrown tile. The school would likely be liable to pay compensation for this accident at school – as the school had failed to clear the danger and were aware of the risks.

More occasionally a school may be liable if a child is known to regularly attack other children and nothing is done to prevent further incidents. However, even in this instance, it is difficult to succeed against the school. The school also has a duty to assess the interests of the aggressive child. Is it proper that the problem child should be excluded from social interaction with his/her piers??

What about accidents outside of the school premises – can compensation be claimed?

“Yes” – but only in certain instances.

Common accidents which happen outside of the school premises, include:

Accident during a school trip

Clearly children are not being on school premises during a trip. However, they should be supervised properly and kept safe from danger.

The school may properly delegate some responsibility to a school trip event organiser. In the vent of an accident it may be that event organiser may be liable for injury.

Example Of School Trip Accident
A common type of school trip may be to some form of adventure playground. Image a child is using a zip wire when the wire collapses causes serious injury. Here it is unlikely the school will be at fault as it would be unreasonable that they should have the technical knowledge to ensure the zip wire is safe. Instead the adventure company would likely be liable for which they no doubt would have appropriate liability insurance.

Example Of School Trip Accident

A common type of school trip may be to some form of adventure playground.
Image a child is using a zip wire when the wire collapses causes serious injury. Here it is unlikely the school will be at fault as it would be unreasonable that they should have the technical knowledge to ensure the zip wire is safe.
Instead the adventure company would likely be liable for which they no doubt would have appropriate liability insurance.

School bus accident

A school bus driver must take extra care with young passengers.

For example:

School bus driver applies the brakes suddenly. A child who is not correctly seated may fall and injure himself.
A bus collides with another vehicle due to the bus driver’s error. The bus company will likely be responsible for any injuries the children sustain in this out of school accident.
If a vehicle collides with the bus – the rules of the road apply equally to a school bus as it does to any other motor vehicle. See our road traffic accident article explaining how to claim compensation following a RTA.

Local swimming pool school trips

Many schools take younger children to have swimming lessons at the local swimming pool. Depending on the accident – both the school and the swimming pool provider may bear responsibility for your child’s injury.

child swimming pool accident — Child Swimming Pool Accident

SUMMARY / NEXT STEPS

You now know all the most common types of school accidents that you can claim compensation for.

We recommend you see our child accident claim article – to learn why an accident involving your child on property where your child has no permission to be may still give rise to a claim for compensation,

FREE – Specialist solicitor online / telephone help

Take a look out our specialist solicitor free help if your child has suffered injury in a school accident. Discuss whether you might have a claim, ask a question or have your claim assessed –