Health and Safety Case Law Relating to Teaching in Schools, Academies and Colleges

Aaron Maguire, from Crewe, was a second year Horticulture student at Reaseheath College when his hand came into contact with the blade of the saw on 20th September 2023. He had been using the saw to cut a piece of wood along its length when the wood twisted and pulled his hand into the cutting disc of the saw. This resulted in the then 17-year old cutting through several fingers and the thumb on his left hand. Following an eight hour operation, surgeons managed to successfully re-attach Aaron’s thumb and index finger, but unfortunately his middle finger could not be saved.

A keen hockey player Aaron, who is now 19, said everyday tasks were now more difficult. “Although my left hand is not my dominant hand, I have had to adjust to doing things that I would normally do with my left hand, such as cutting food and picking up everyday objects like glasses and cups,” he said. “I cannot grip things properly and it makes it difficult to do the hobbies I did. “Prior to the incident, I was a keen hockey player. I still try to play hockey now, but it is nowhere near the level I was playing at before I had my injury.”. Aaron will require further surgery due to bone from his middle finger moving into his hand.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that the College failed to adequately risk assess or produce a written safe system of work for using the mitre saw. It did not record what training and instruction was given to students on the use of the saw. There was no process to determine whether supervision was needed, nor was there any refresher training for using the saw following the students’ return from their summer break. On the day of the incident, Aaron had been seen by the tutor earlier that morning using the saw improperly. Despite this, he was allowed to use the saw again later that day without supervision. HSE guidance states that a suitable and sufficient risk assessment should be carried out to identify measures that can be taken to overcome the risks that the hazard presents. It also states that young people warrant special consideration due to their judgement and lack of experience.

Reaseheath College pleaded guilty to Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. It was fined £40,000 and ordered to pay £6,106 in costs at Chester Magistrates’ Court on 4th June 2025.

Cargilfield School has been fined following the incident where a pupil sustained severe cuts to his middle and index finger on his right hand and serious tendon damage, whilst using a bandsaw.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court heard that, between 1 September 2015 and 2 November 2017, in the Construction Design and Technology Workshop at Cargilfield School, Edinburgh, pupils made wooden boxes using a bandsaw which is classed as a dangerous machine.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found Cargilfield School failed to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks arising out of or in connection with use of the bandsaw and failed to adequately supervise pupils while they were carrying out tasks using the band saw. The pupil was making a free hand cut on the bandsaw without adequate workpiece support and was not adequately supervised.

Cargilfield School pleaded guilty to breaching Sections 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act and was fined £3,350.

After the hearing, HSE inspector, Karen Moran said: “A bandsaw is considered a dangerous machine when used by adults, let alone children. This significant and very serious injury could have been prevented had the risk been identified and properly managed. All schools should take steps to ensure the safety of their pupils and HSE will not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action against those that fall below the required standards.”

A twelve year old schoolboy was in a design and technology class making animal shapes out of plywood on 25th March 2014. The class used hand saws and some were using a belt sanding machine.The schoolboy was using the machine for the first time, along with fellow pupils. They were shown how to use it by a fellow pupil and none knew the purpose of the metal guard for the sanding belt which was in a raised position. When the schoolboy put the shape to the belt, it flipped downwards into the gap pulling his left hand forward and trapping it between the shape and the belt. The top of the boys left hand middle finger had to be amputated down to knuckle and was absent from school for several weeks.

The teacher had not received adequate training to recognise that the machine was in an unsafe condition or recognise the risk of allowing pupils to use the machinery unsupervised and without suitable training. The design and technology class had been without a technician for 8 weeks prior to the incident; on the day of the incident the teacher was supervising the class alone.

The London Borough of Islington pleaded guilty to breaches of Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and was fined £200,000 and ordered to pay full costs of £19,865.

North Yorkshire County Council was prosecuted after a 14-year-old boy needed to have a finger amputated after it got tangled in a lathe during a lesson at Knaresborough’s King James’ School. The pupil was using a polishing cloth on a work piece as it rotated on a manual metal lathe during a design and technology class when the incident happened on 19 November 2013.

The boy’s right hand became entangled around the work piece and severed part of his index finger. There were six other mini lathes in use by pupils in the same class. He was given first aid before being taken to hospital. After an unsuccessful operation to reattach the finger, the pupil needed to undergo further surgery to amputate the finger to below the first joint. He has needed several physiotherapy and occupational therapy sessions.

The Health and Safety Executive prosecution found that the Council had failed to identify that the practice of hand-polishing on metal lathes was unsafe despite it being used for years at the 1,700-pupil school. The HSE served a prohibition notice on the Council, halting any use of hand-held polishing cloths on the lathes at King James’ School and advising the Authority to take action to ensure similar practices were not underway at other schools under its control.

The HSE’s investigation found that the Council’s assessment of potential risks of using of the lathes had failed to consider all the tasks undertaken on the machine and so had not identified the unsafe system being used by pupils. As such, pupils were routinely put at risk of injury. North Yorkshire County Council was fined £5,000 and ordered to pay £28,287 in costs after admitting a breach of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

An adventure activity and team building organisation has been fined after a child was hit by a car and seriously injured whilst on a school trip. Birmingham Magistrates’ Court heard how, on Friday 31 March 2017, a group of teenage school children from Birmingham were participating in a walking expedition on the outskirts of Birmingham. The route being taken required the group and their adult supervisor to cross the busy A45 dual carriageway near Meriden, West Midlands, at around 4pm. After waiting for a gap in the traffic some of the children started crossing the road when one of the pupils was struck by a car travelling in the outside lane. The 15-year-old suffered multiple fractures as a result of the collision.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found Freax, the company responsible for the expedition had not planned the route to allow for safe passage across the dual carriageway. There were no specific traffic control measures in place at the crossing point used by the participants, and the company chose not to use a footbridge about 400 metres away as part of the expedition route. Freax Limited of Nechells Park Road, Birmingham was found guilty of breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The Company was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £22,455.16 in costs.

Speaking after the hearing, HSE inspector Richard Littlefair said: “This case highlights the importance of planning for safety when organising such outdoor activities involving school children". “Children should be allowed to take part in challenging activities, however there is a balance to be struck between protecting children from the most serious risks and allowing them to reap the benefits of participating". “Companies should make sure that challenging activities are managed in a sensible and proportionate way so that children are not exposed to unnecessary risk of serious personal injury or death".

Canterbury Crown Court heard that a seven year old boy was at a summer activity camp run by St. Edmunds School. Whilst taking part in a scheduled swim he got into difficulties and struggled for over three minutes before becoming motionless in the water. The lifeguards noticed he was in trouble and retrieved him. He regained consciousness after CPR but did develop pneumonitis as a result of the incident.

The Health and Safety Executive investigation into the incident, which occurred on 1 August 2014, found that the lifeguards were not effectively managed and monitored to ensure that they were constantly vigilant. Two out of the three lifeguards did not hold a current, in date lifeguard qualification. St. Edmunds School Canterbury pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, and was fined £18,000 and ordered to pay costs of £9669.19.

Two Scottish councils were fined after an incident in which a child was found at the bottom of a local swimming pool.Both Aberdeen City Council and Aberdeenshire Council pleaded guilty to safety breaches when they appeared in court. The Court heard that on 28 June 2012, an 11-year-old pupil from Ferryhill Primary School attended Stonehaven Open Air Pool as part of an educational excursion. During the visit he became submerged under water and was recovered unconscious from the bottom of the pool by a member of the public.

The court was told that the party of 23 pupils, the teacher and a teaching assistant arrived on the day of the excursion but no formal booking had been made. However, the pupils were allowed to swim in the pool which water depth ranges from 0.8 metres in the shallow end to 2.2 metres at the deep end, with a water slide located at the deep end. While the pupils were using the pool and slide, a member of the public using the pool noticed a shadow under the water at the deep end. On further investigation he found the child lying on the bottom of the pool, he recovered the unconscious child and lifted him onto the poolside. The alarm was raised and lifeguards were alerted. He was not breathing and had no palpable pulse, but CPR was successfully administered by lifeguards and the pupil has since made a full recovery.

Ferryhill Primary School is an Aberdeen City Council facility and Stonehaven Open Air Pool is operated by Aberdeenshire Council. The subsequent Health and Safety Executive investigation found issues with staffing levels and lifeguard positioning at the pool, and the effective management of educational visits at the School. Both parties pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Aberdeen City Council was fined £9000 while Aberdeenshire Council was fined £4000.

Essex County Council has been fined after a novice climber plunged seven and a half metres from an indoor rock face at a climbing centre in Harlow. The 15 year-old girl, from Ware was taking part in her fifth climbing club session at the Harlow Centre for Outdoor Learning on 8 March, 2014 when the incident took place. She was climbing on the indoor climbing wall whist being belayed by an eight year-old, who had only attended three previous climbing club sessions. On the day of the incident the eight year-old was using a certain belay device, for the first time. The climber lost her footing on the wall, but her younger belayer was unable to control her fall. She plummeted 7.5 metres onto the floor below. She suffered bruised internal organs, back and neck, as well as deep muscle tissue damage. She continues to suffer on-going pain from her injuries, and continues to need physiotherapy.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive found the instructor was not competent to run this type of progressive climbing club session, as she did not have the required climbing training and site-specific assessment. The Court heard the instructor allowed the belaying to take place without use of an additional back-up belayer and without direct supervision from the instructor. There had been no use of a ground anchor or sand bag to counter the significant weight difference between the climber and belayer, and no application of safety knots to prevent the climber from falling to the ground.

Essex County Council, operating as Essex Outdoors, was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £2,599 in costs, and a victim surcharge of £120 for breaching section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974.

The governors of a boys’ school in Tonbridge were prosecuted after a 14-year-old pupil was severely injured when he was hit by a shot put thrown by another boy. The incident happened during a routine multi-sport PE lesson at The Judd School on 20 June 2014. The pupil had left a triple jump area and was standing on the edge of the shot put landing zone to check a friend’s throw when he was struck on the back of his head by a shot. The student suffered life-threatening injuries and needed emergency brain surgery on a fractured skull. He returned to school but his injury has resulted in a permanent indentation at the base of his skull.

The Health and Safety Executive investigation identified the School had not adopted measures in its own risk assessment and PE guidance on multi-event lessons had not been followed. Sevenoaks Magistrates were told that there were 24 boys in the lesson, divided into six groups. The students were taking part in hurdles, long jump, triple jump, javelin, discus and shot put. It was a lesson format used regularly at The Judd School and the pupils had participated in similar lessons in previous years. The six sports were spread across the field but the end of the landing zone for the shot put was only about three metres from the end of the triple jump sand pit, where the 14-year-old was competing. When the whistle blew to mark the end of the session, he left the triple jump and went to the shot put to see how far his friend had thrown. At the same time, another pupil was completing his throw, turning as he did so he was facing away from the zone. The shot hit the pupil on the back of the head, causing a severely fractured skull and internal swelling. He was in hospital for nearly a month but was able to return to School the following term. The teenager was no longer able to take part in some contact sports and may suffer longer-term issues.

The HSE investigation found that the School had carried out a risk assessment for PE lessons. However, although it had referenced the guidance by the Association for Physical Education, it did not follow their recommendation that such lessons be restricted to a maximum of four sports with only one to be a throwing event. The School’s inclusion of six sports with three throwing events, had significantly increased the risks to pupils, as had the proximity of the triple jump pit to the shot put landing zone.

The Governing Body of The Judd School was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £1,375 in costs after admitting a breach of Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. Magistrates agreed with HSE that the safety breach had been ‘substantial’

St Thomas Becket Catholic Primary School, Croydon, has been fined £35,000 after a young boy was left with critical burns when his nativity costume caught fire during the School’s annual carol concert in December 2019. The concert was being held Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in Bingham Road, Croydon. The injured child was part of a group of 60 year 3 children waiting in costumes in a narrow corridor holding 10-inch lit taper candles. The injured 7 year old boy was dressed in a home-made sheep costume made using cotton wool.

The injured boy’s father described how they were waiting for their son to emerge in the church when people started running outside and screaming, which he sated as feeling like “a bomb had gone off”. According to witness accounts the fire was extinguished with some difficulty and the child received first aid at the scene before being taken by air ambulance to Broomfield Hospital. He was found to have sustained an estimated 45 per cent burns to his body; resulting in “life-changing injuries” that will leave him dependent on third party care for basic needs. The child’s parents described in their victim statements the “excruciating” pain that their son, who no longer attends the School, has been through and is still going through. The court heard how the young boy underwent “countless” surgeries and hospital appointments, which are continuing three years later. In her impact statement, the boy’s mother said “a school should be a “trusted place” for parents and children and would never expect her child’s school to “expose him to life-threatening danger like this”.

Judge Philip Bartle fined the School £35,000 for breaching the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 – more specifically for failing to properly assess the risk involved and failing to take reasonably practical steps to minimise or eliminate the risk. The judge also ordered that it should pay £25,970 in prosecution costs and that victim compensation should be dealt with by the civil courts. Speaking after the hearing, HSE Inspector Sarah Whittle said: “This was a shocking and scary incident that could have so easily been avoided. Common sense alone should have been enough to see the risk. Mitigation in this case would have been the substitution of wax candles for flameless ones, thereby reducing the risk to zero. This was a step the School took after the incident but by then it was far too late for a young child who will be forever affected by this. “The importance of a suitable and sufficient risk assessment has never been made so clear.”.

Bright Horizons Family Solutions was prosecuted following the death of Fox Goulding after he choked on a piece of mango he was eating at its Corstorphine Nursery in Edinburgh.

Bright Horizons Family Solutions, which had no previous convictions, pleaded guilty under section 76 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 and was fined £800,000.

Fox Goulding had only attended the Corstorphine nursery for seven days before tragedy struck in July 2019. The 10 month old was eating mango and raspberries at a table with his room mates. The nursery nurse who was sitting next to him left the room to use a toilet. When she returned, less than 3 minutes later, she saw Fox hunched forward and thought he had fallen asleep.

As soon as the staff realised he wasn’t breathing, a nursery nurse gave him repeated back slaps while holding the boy almost upside down in an attempt to dislodge the food blocking his airway. The nursery manager was informed and immediately shouted for someone to call an ambulance. While waiting for the emergency services to arrive, a nursery nurse and the nursery manager performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). On their arrival, paramedics were able to remove the piece of fruit causing the obstruction and took Goulding to the city’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children. However, the boy was in cardiac arrest and unresponsive during the journey. He died the next day in the hospital’s intensive care unit and was pronounced dead at 23.14.

Police Scotland seized the nursery’s CCTV system and analysed footage of supervision in the Under Two Room for 26 days from 3 June to 8 July 2019. The footage showed that a member of staff did not always sit at the table during meal times contrary to Bright Horizons Family Solutions’ policy. They also found that supervision generally lessened as the mealtime progressed, particularly at breakfast and tea as staff could distracted by parents entering the room or cleaning duties. Police Scotland found there was no recorded CCTV footage of the incident on the afternoon of 9 July 2019; the CCTV system had failed to record any footage while the nursery was in operation that day.

The joint investigation by the Police and the City of Edinburgh Council found that if Bright Horizons had provided adequate instruction and supervision at the Corstorphine nursery in relation to the implementation of its policies and procedures regarding risk of choking on foods and also provided adequate instruction and supervision in relation to the guidance to help avoid choking details in the NHS document “Setting the Table” or similar guidance, then the risk of Fox Goulding choking on the mango would have been reduced. If he had choked on the mango while being adequately supervised the choking is more likely to have been discovered at the time or closer to the time it occurred providing greater opportunity for a successful outcome from interventions. Although the investigators determined that there had been more than the necessary number of staff present for the number of children in the Under Two Room during teatime on 9 July 2019, they concluded that they had not been suitably deployed while the children were eating. Bright Horizons Family Solutions documented procedures required at least one member of staff to be always sitting with a group of children during mealtimes.

Bright Horizons Family Solutions, which owned 318 nurseries throughout the UK, including 20 in Scotland at the time of the incident, ‘co-operated fully and responded comprehensively and timeously to all requests for information assistance’ throughout the investigation. Shortly after the incident, it provided refresher training on safe and effective mealtimes for all its Scottish staff as a precautionary measure with an emphasis on ensuring that children are directly supervised at all times while eating in accordance with its policy and previous staff training provided. The Nursery involved in the incident has been closed and will not re-open.

A separate prosecution of the Nursery's Manager is currently on-going under Section 3 of the Health & Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

The Unity Multi Academy Trust pleaded guilty and was fined £300,000 after a 19-year-old student died as a result of a ‘series of management failures'. Owen Garnett, who was a Sixth Form student at Welcombe Hills School in Stratford-upon-Avon, tragically died two days after choking on a paper towel on 9th January 2023. The teenager had attended the School, which is for children with special educational needs, since he was 11. He had been diagnosed with Pica – a potentially life-threatening eating disorder where sufferers have a compulsion to eat things which have no nutritional value.

On 9th January 2023, Owen was out in the playground area with other students during a break from class, unsupervised, and found his way back into school. It took several minutes for his absence to be noticed and when he was found, it was around the side of the building, and he was choking. Emergency services were called, and although they retrieved a ball of paper towel from his throat, he had been without oxygen too long and later died in hospital. Days before, there had been a similar incident with Owen, where he was seen in the playground by a teacher, again choking on blue towel, but Owen managed to clear his airway on his own.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that none of the staff in Owen’s class team had received any specific training on the management of safety risks associated with Pica. The investigation also found that students at the School had individual risk assessments which detailed any specific health and safety risks, which related to them, and the control measures that needed to be in place to protect against that risk. The risk of choking associated with Pica was identified on Owen’s risk assessment and a “named person” was supposed to supervise him to make sure he did not eat anything that could cause him harm. The School failed to ensure that all the safety risks associated with Pica hazards, such as, in Owen’s case, the garden area, or supplies of paper towels, were correctly identified and that the preventive and protective measures including supervision, were organised in such a way as to protect him. They also failed to effectively investigate and respond to the concerns raised by his family.

HSE inspector Rebecca Whiley said: “This tragic incident could have easily been avoided if Owen was being closely supervised, as he should have been. The near miss incident a few days before should have raised the alarm with the School and triggered an investigation into how Owen had been able to access the paper towel, and steps could have been taken to prevent it happening again. His death resulted from a series of management failures throughout Owen’s time at the Hub, and a failure by the School to act on the concerns raised by his family".