Girl loses fingers in school art lesson

A school was ordered to pay nearly £20,000 in fines and legal costs yesterday after a pupil lost all but two of her fingers in an art lesson.

The penalty was increased on the Giles foundation school in Boston, Lincolnshire, because staff failed to report the "catastrophic" incident, involving plaster of paris, to the Health and Safety Executive.

Boston magistrates heard the schoolgirl, whose identity has not been revealed, was one of a group on a BTec course who were making sculptures of their hands. They had been told to work clay round their fingers to make a mould, which they were then to fill with liquid plaster of paris mixed with water in a bucket.



Instead, the girl – referred to as Student X – plunged her hands into the bucket up to the wrist and kept them there as the plaster set. The court heard chemical reactions in the process could reach 60C in large quantities of the plaster, and the student suffered "terrible burns".

She underwent 12 operations by plastic surgeons but was left with no fingers on one hand and two on the other. It was the doctors who informed the HSE about the tragedy, six weeks after it had happened.

The incident, which saw desperate pupils, staff and paramedics try to free the 16-year-old from the quick-setting plaster, has led to a national drive for closer HSE links with schools.