Burnt at school after sitting on a radiator? That’ll be £29,000 please!
Local councils are paying thousands of pounds compensation to pupils injured at school
School authorities were forced to pay out a combined amount of nearly £2.25 million in compensation to pupils last year as a result of claims by students who injured themselves at school.
The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that compensation claims made included a pupil who was burnt after sitting on a radiator (later awarded £29,000) and another student who was burnt by a glue gun.
There were also claims from pupils who had been burnt by hot drinks and soup. Experts fear that the emergence of adverts for compensation lawyers means more parents and students are grabbing the opportunity to get compensation.
“There is a real fear that the presence of no-win-no-fee lawyers encourages some people to chance their arm, clogging up the system with spurious claims that cost a substantial amount of taxpayers’ money,” said John Ransford, chief executive of the Local Government Association.
Recently, we reported that worried teachers were wrapping up children in cotton wool at school. In the MFM office, we’ve been talking about some of the injuries that we saw in school. They never led to claims for compensation, although, maybe they should have?
We’d love to know your thoughts on this…
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