Pupils treated in hospital as 25 are crushed in freak accident at school

Twenty-five children were injured in a pile-up in a school corridor triggered when a first-year pupil stopped to pick up her shoe.

Paramedics were called to the school to treat pupils for crush injuries, including ankle sprains, bruising and sore heads.

All the children were sent home following the incident, several were taken to hospital and five were kept off school the following day.

Stephen Miller, headteacher at Denny High School in Falkirk, said that investigations were ongoing into the incident, which happened outside the school library after morning break on Tuesday.

He said: "It would appear that the cause of the crush was an innocent and accidental trip by a pupil, who paused to retrieve a shoe but was overtaken by the mass of following pupils unaware that there was a problem ahead. In the main, the injuries were soft-tissue damage, ankle sprains, dizziness and sore heads."

A senior pupil at the school, which has 1,250 students, said: "The corridor was really busy, and people just kept walking, and they started to pile up. We were helping the people who had been injured, and at one point it was like the scene in The Wizard of Oz when the witch is trapped underneath the house."