Time limit
Age 21
or claim now as a parent
You claim against
Insurer
not a teacher
Success Fee Cap
25%
general damages, past losses
Upfront cost
£0
No Win No Fee
Personal Injury Solicitor at Claim Time Solicitors, Birmingham. Handling personal injury and child injury claims across England and Wales on a No Win No Fee basis.
Every guide we publish is verified against UK statute and current case law before release.
If your child was injured at school and the school fell short of the care it owed them, you may be eligible for filing school injury claims on their behalf. You do not need to wait until they turn 18, and you will not be claiming against a teacher personally. Claims are handled by the school’s insurer.
The claim question usually comes later, once the treatment costs start adding up or it becomes clear the injury will not settle quickly. By then many families assume too much time has passed, or that claiming means dragging a teacher through it. Neither is usually true.
When a child is hurt at school, most parents’ first instinct is not to claim. It is to find out what happened, and whether it could happen again.
This guide sets out when a school injury claim is possible, who the claim actually goes to, what compensation covers, and how long you have.
Usually yes, if the school failed to take reasonable care and your child was hurt because of it. An accident on its own is not enough.
Can you make a claim for a child injured at school?
Schools owe pupils a duty of care. In practice that means supervising properly, checking that activities are safe before they run, keeping equipment and premises in good order, and dealing with injuries sensibly when they happen. Where one of those falls down and a child is hurt as a result, filing the school for injury claims may be possible.
An accident at school is not automatically somebody’s fault. Children fall over, and no school can prevent every bump. What decides a claim is whether the school did something a reasonably careful parent would not have done, or failed to do something they would have.
You are more likely to have a claim if:
- Your child was left unsupervised, or supervision was too thin for the activity
- Equipment was broken, worn or unsuitable for their age
- A known hazard was reported and nothing was done about it
- Floors, playgrounds or corridors were unsafe and used anyway
- The school failed to follow its own risk assessment or safety policy
- An injury was not treated properly, or a head injury was not checked
If none of those apply and your child was simply unlucky, there may be no claim, and we will tell you that rather than take the case on. Most school injury claims turn on one clear failing, and it is usually apparent within a short conversation whether yours does.
What kinds of school accident can you claim for?
Any injury caused by the school falling short of its duty, whether it happened in a classroom, a corridor, the playground, a PE lesson or on a school trip.
| Where It Happened | Typical Causes |
|---|---|
| Playground | Poorly maintained equipment, unsafe surfaces, thin supervision at break |
| PE and school sport | Unsupervised activity, faulty gym equipment, badly mismatched pupils, rules not enforced |
| Classroom and corridors | Trips and falls, falling objects, unsafe furniture or storage |
| Science, DT and cookery | Burns, cuts and chemical injuries where safety steps were skipped |
| School trips | Inadequate risk assessment, poor supervision ratios, unsafe transport |
| Bullying and assault | Where the school knew of a risk and failed to act on it |
If a child is injured at school, who is responsible?
The organisation responsible for running the school, not an individual teacher. Their public liability insurer handles the claim and pays any compensation.
Parents often hold back because a claim feels like naming a teacher their child still sees every day. That is not how school injury claims work. The claim goes to an organisation, and from there to its insurer.
| Type of School | Usual Defendant |
|---|---|
| Community or maintained school | Local authority |
| Academy or free school | The academy trust |
| Independent school | The proprietor |
| Outside club using school premises | Club, school, or both |
It depends on who employed the staff involved and who was responsible for the premises at the time. Part of our job is identifying the right defendant at the outset so no time is lost.
Claims rest on the ordinary law of negligence, together with the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 where premises or equipment are involved, and duties under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
Can you claim if your child is injured in the playground?
Yes, where the injury happened because of something the school was responsible for rather than because a child fell over. The playground is where most primary school injuries happen, and where the records are usually thinnest.
Break time is the hardest part of the school day to supervise. One adult may be watching a hundred children across a space with corners you cannot see into from anywhere you can stand. That is not in itself a failure, and a child who trips while running is not a claim. What makes a playground injury claimable is something the school could have controlled and did not.
- Equipment with a known fault, or equipment installed for an older age group than the children using it
- Impact surfacing worn through, compacted, or missing under climbing equipment
- Raised or broken paving, unfilled potholes, or a drain cover left loose
- Supervision too thin for the number of children and the layout, particularly where there are blind spots
- A hazard reported by staff, a parent or a pupil and left unaddressed
- Equipment left out and reachable when it should have been stored, such as PE apparatus or maintenance tools
The provision that matters most here
Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957, section 2(3)(a)
A school’s legal obligation to take the care a reasonably careful parent would take in the same circumstances. It covers supervision, the safety of activities, the condition of premises and equipment, and how injuries are dealt with when they happen.
Two documents decide most playground cases. Ask the school for its playground inspection records and the risk assessment for break time supervision, covering the period your child was injured in. Both should exist. A school that cannot produce either will struggle to explain that later, and the request itself is free.
Injuries during PE and School Sport
Yes, where the injury happened because of something the school was responsible for rather than because a child fell over. The playground is where most primary school injuries happen, and where the records are usually thinnest.
Sport carries risk that you accept by letting your child take part, and an injury in a properly run lesson is not usually a claim. What a consent form does not cover is a failure to run the activity safely in the first place.
A PE or school sport injury becomes a claim where the school fell short of the care it owed your child, not simply because your child was hurt. The difference is almost always in how the session was set up and supervised, and the failures that decide these cases are specific and they recur
When a sports injury is a claim
- Pupils matched by year group rather than by size, weight or ability in a contact sport such as rugby or football.
- Apparatus used without mats, or with mats positioned for a different exercise.
- Gymnastics or trampolining equipment used with nobody watching the landing area.
- Equipment already reported as split, worn or loose and used anyway.
- A playing surface with a known defect, or an indoor floor left wet.
- Rules not enforced, so dangerous play carried on after staff noticed it.
- No qualified first aid cover for a contact or high-risk activity.
- A pupil showing signs of concussion returned to play in the same session.
When a sports injury is a claim
- A tackle made within the rules during a properly supervised match.
- A fall during a gymnastics exercise that was correctly set up and supervised.
- An awkward landing in a lesson pitched to the pupils’ age and ability.
- Contact between two pupils of similar build who were following the coach’s instructions.
- An injury that happened despite the school doing what a careful school would have done
Where the injury was caused by the condition of the premises or the equipment rather than by how the activity was run, the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 also applies. Section 2(3)(a) requires an occupier to be prepared for children to be less careful than adults, which is why “he was not concentrating” is a weak answer from a school rather than a defence.
Does the school's insurance cover a sports injury?
Yes, but only where the school was at fault, and this is the point most parents are given the wrong answer on.
Academy trusts in the Department for Education’s risk protection arrangement hold third party public liability cover with an unlimited indemnity limit. The arrangement indemnifies the trust for sums it becomes legally liable to pay for personal injury. Maintained schools are covered through arrangements made on their behalf rather than individually.
That wording decides everything. It is liability cover, not accident cover. It responds when the school is legally at fault, and it does not pay out because a child was hurt. A child who breaks a wrist landing awkwardly in a properly supervised, properly matched netball lesson has had an accident, and the cover will not pay for it. A child who breaks a wrist falling from apparatus set up without mats is a different case, and there it responds.
Separately from that, some schools hold a pupil personal accident policy, which pays fixed sums for specified injuries regardless of whether anyone was at fault. The amounts are usually modest and not every school has one. Ask the school in writing whether it holds one and ask for the summary of cover. A payment under that policy does not stop a fault-based claim and does not reduce it.
Head injuries are judged on what happened next
Where a head injury is involved, the question is not only how the collision happened but what the school did in the twenty minutes afterwards. Returning a concussed child to play, or sending them back to lessons without an assessment, can found a claim on its own even where nobody was at fault for the original contact.
The same analysis applies to an activity run on school premises by an outside coach or club. The claim may lie against the club, the school, or both, depending on who ran the session, who supervised it and who was responsible for the equipment used. Identifying the right organisation at the outset matters, because naming the wrong one wastes months.
“Parents worry that claiming means turning on a teacher. In practice the correspondence goes to an insurer, and most schools would rather the system worked properly than have a family left out of pocket.”
How to start a claim
Get your child seen, ask the school for the accident book entry in writing, photograph what you can, and keep receipts.
If the school will not tell you what happened, or will not hand over the report
You are entitled to the records, and naming the right route in writing is usually what ends the delay. Which route you have depends on what kind of school it is.
This is the part parents are least often told about, and it comes up more than the injury itself. A child comes home with an arm they cannot use and nobody has mentioned an incident. A report takes three weeks and several emails to appear. When it does appear, it describes the accident as something the child did.
None of that decides whether you have a claim. All of it is evidence about how the school handled the incident, and all of it is easier to deal with early than late.
The route that works at every school
Your child’s accident records are personal data, so you can make a data protection request for them. This applies to every school of every type. The school must respond without undue delay and within one month. That can be extended by up to two further months where a request is genuinely complex or where several have been made, but the school has to tell you it is extending, and it has to tell you inside the first month. Silence is not an extension.
Ask in one email for the accident book entry, any incident report, the risk assessment for the activity, and any investigation notes. Asking for them together rather than one at a time stops the clock being restarted on you.
The faster route, if it applies to your school
There is a quicker deadline for the educational record, but it does not apply everywhere, and this is where most guidance goes wrong.
Most secondary schools in England are academies, so for a secondary-age child the data protection route is usually the one you have. If you are not sure which category your child’s school falls into, make the data protection request anyway: it covers everything the educational record covers and more
Send one email. Date it, say which route you are using, list the four documents, and ask for confirmation of receipt. If the deadline passes, escalate to the governing body or the academy trust, then to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Keep every reply, including the unhelpful ones. A school that says there is no record, or does not answer at all, has told you something useful.
If the report blames your child
An account written by the people being asked to explain themselves is not a finding of fact, and it does not end anything. Two things sit against it. The standard a school is held to already assumes that children misjudge things, so “he was running” describes a playground rather than excusing one. And where a child genuinely did contribute to their own injury, the damages are reduced to reflect their share rather than the claim being lost. A reduction also takes account of the child’s age, because the question is what care a child of that age could reasonably have taken.
If the report does not match what your child says, write to the school setting out the difference and ask for your account to be added to the record. That creates a dated document of the dispute while the other evidence is still fresh.
What does compensation for a school injury cover?
The injury itself, plus the money the family has spent or lost because of it. Every claim is valued on its own facts, so no figure can be quoted in advance.
School accident claims are usually made up of:
- The injury, including pain, recovery time and any lasting effect on what your child can do
- Treatment, such as physiotherapy, dental work, counselling or private consultations
- Care and support at home or at school during recovery
- Psychological harm, where it has been diagnosed
- Your own losses, including earnings lost while caring for your child and travel to appointments
Compensation for the injury itself is assessed against the Judicial College Guidelines, now in its 18th edition, published April 2026. The Guidelines set brackets by injury type and severity, and an independent medical report on your child places the claim within one.
That report is why nobody can give you a reliable figure on a first call, and it is worth being wary of anyone who does.
How long do you have to claim for a child injured at school?
A child’s three year clock does not start until their 18th birthday, so they have until 21. As a parent you can claim on their behalf at any point before that.
Adults have three years from the date of an accident under section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980. For children, section 28 stops the clock until they turn 18. Most families claim straight away, with a parent acting as litigation friend.
Having until 21 is not a reason to wait. Accident book entries, CCTV, risk assessments and witness memories all fade, and staff move on. Claims started within weeks of the injury are far easier to evidence than those started years later.
What does it cost to make a school injury claim?
Nothing upfront. Under No Win No Fee you pay nothing for our work if the claim does not succeed, and a capped success fee if it does.
Most school accident claims run on a Conditional Fee Agreement, better known as No Win No Fee. If the claim succeeds, a success fee is deducted from the compensation. The Conditional Fee Agreements Order 2013 caps that at 25%, and the cap applies to general damages and past financial losses only. Anything awarded for future losses sits outside it.
There are also disbursements to consider, such as medical report and court fees, and these are usually covered by insurance taken out at the start of the claim. We put the exact figures in writing before you agree to anything.
Does your child have a valid school injury claim?
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Summary
A school injury claim turns on whether the school fell short of the care it owed your child, not simply on the fact that an accident happened. Where it did fall short, the claim goes to the local authority, academy trust or proprietor and is handled by their insurer.
You have until your child turns 21, but the evidence that decides these claims does not last that long. Acting early is about preserving the accident book entry, the CCTV and the witness recollection, not about the deadline.
Key takeaways
- An accident alone is not enough; the school must have fallen short of its duty of care
- The claim goes to an organisation and its insurer, not to a teacher personally
- No limitation period runs while your child is under 18, and they have until 21
- A parent can claim at any time as litigation friend
- Compensation covers the injury plus evidenced family losses
- Success fees are capped at 25% of general damages and past financial losses
- A settlement for a child needs court approval and is held until they turn 18
Frequently Asked Questions
The school didn't tell me my child had been hurt. What can I do?
Ask for the records in writing straight away, and name the route you are using. If your child is at a school maintained by the local authority, the governing body must make the educational record available within fifteen school days of a written request. If your child is at an academy, a free school or an independent school, that particular route does not apply and you should make a data protection request instead, which carries its own deadline. Ask separately for the accident book entry and any incident report in the same email, because an accident record does not necessarily form part of the educational record.
The school is taking weeks to give me the accident report. Is there a deadline?
Yes, and the section above sets out which deadline applies to your school. Three things make the request harder to stall. Send it to a named person or a general enquiries address rather than only to your usual contact, because the clock starts when the organisation receives it rather than when somebody passes it on. Put a date range on it, so nobody can call it too vague. And ask for confirmation of receipt, so there is no argument later about when it arrived. A documented delay does not win a claim by itself, but it is evidence about how the incident was handled.
Can I sue my child's school for an injury?
Does signing a school consent form stop me from claiming?
What happens to the compensation if my child is under 18?
It does not go to the parent. A judge must approve any settlement for a child and check it is fair before it is finalised. The money is then usually held in court, where it earns interest, and paid to your child at 18. If there is a specific need before then, such as treatment or equipment, an application can be made to release funds early.
Will making a claim affect my child at school?
It should not. The claim is handled between solicitors and the insurer rather than with the school directly, and schools carry liability insurance precisely so that these situations can be dealt with properly. If you have concerns about how your child is being treated, tell us and we will factor it into how we handle the correspondence.
Glossary of Key Terms
Disclaimer: The information on this page is for general guidance only and does not constitute legal advice. Compensation figures are indicative, and individual outcomes vary. Claim Time Solicitors is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA No. 612481). No Win No Fee refers to a Conditional Fee Agreement; terms apply.
