Rise in ACC claims at schools

Standards of playground safety had improved greatly

More than 1500 Rotorua students and 40 teachers are injured on school grounds every year - costing our accident compensation scheme hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And the head of a principals' group believes some claims may be from over-protective and anxious parents.

In excess of 8000 ACC claims were made by students for accidents on school grounds or in school buildings between 2010 and 2014, according to ACC figures.

The number of claims was highest in 2014, at 1712 claims, but the total cost of claims was highest in 2012, at $303,681.

More than 250 claims were made by teachers over the five-year period. The number of claims was highest in 2011, at 62 claims, while the total cost of claims was highest in 2012, at $66,182.

Fractures, dislocations and soft tissue injuries were among the most common causes of claims.

Otonga Road Primary School principal Linda Woon didn't think there was a major risk of safety in schools.

"As far as children are concerned, we don't want to wrap them in cottonwool," she said. "We want them to be able to play and experiment with their play because that's how they learn.

"We try to make it as safe as we can by ensuring the playground is regularly reviewed and inspected to make sure they are safe but even with that, you still get broken wrists.

"That's probably the worst of it and the most common."

Such accidents could happen anywhere at any time, she said. "There's no real telling or prediction. A child could break a wrist by just tripping over their own feet. Then there's a number of them where someone might have pushed them on the flying fox or they fall off one of the bars. Falling can still end in a break even with the correct fall equipment underneath."

The occasional accident by teachers was similarly inevitable, she said. "We're like any other people, we can trip over things too. Staff often carry heavy loads and don't always see what's been left on the ground."

Nationally, 361,450 ACC claims were made by students in the past five years, costing the ACC scheme more than $100 million in total.

The number of claims increased each year to 79,622 in 2014. The total cost of claims was higher in 2013, at $19,390,681.

The national figures for teacher claims were not readily available.

New Zealand Principals' Federation president Denise Torrey was surprised the number of claims had increased.

"Are our kids being nice and active like we want them to be, are we covering our kids in too much cotton wool or is it just that we're getting better at reporting these things?

"I certainly don't think our school grounds are becoming more dangerous but we're definitely becoming more protective of our kids and that could be reflected in those figures."

Standards of playground safety had improved greatly, she said.

"There's certainly more of a culture around protecting kids. What we might have hobbled home on and put ice on when I was a kid is now becoming something major that turns up in the doctor's office ..."