Threat to sue primary school over daughter's broken arm

[dutchman]

A mother is threatening to sue a Coventry primary school after her five-year-old daughter broke her arm on the first day back after the summer holiday.

Little Ismah Akhtar has been left with four metal wires in her arm after falling from a climbing frame at Broad Heath Primary School, in Paradise, last week.

Her mum Vaseem Akhtar, of Silverton Road, Paradise, is furious and claims her daughter was not being properly supervised. She says the ordeal has left Ismah traumatised.

“I had her at home for six weeks and she didn’t have a scratch on her,” Mrs Akhtar, 30, said.

“She goes back to school for one day and this happens. It’s heartbreaking.”

Heavily pregnant Mrs Akhtar – who was due to give birth to her fourth child on Tuesday – said she received a call from the Hanford Close school shortly after lunchtime last Monday saying Ismah had hurt her arm.

She said: “When I saw the ambulance there in the car park my heart just sank. I thought ‘please don’t tell me that’s there for my daughter’.

“There was all these staff around her and she was sitting there with an ice pack on her arm and the swelling was huge.”

Mrs Akhtar says Ismah was given morphine as well as gas and air for the pain before undergoing a two-hour operation at University Hospital, Walsgrave, to repair the double break – one above and one below the elbow.

Mrs Akhtar, who is a former dinner lady, stayed with her daughter at hospital for two days. She says the school should have done more to prevent the accident.

“It was raining and she went onto that awful-looking climbing frame,” Mrs Akhtar said.

“She was trying to get herself down but she slipped on a log and fell straight on her elbow. She told me she was crying and a dinner lady told her she was fine and tried to pick her up by her broken arm.”

Mrs Akhtar added: “She’s been in so much pain and she’s always tired and nauseous.

"She keeps asking me when her arm’s going to get better.

“I’m up with her all the time and I don’t need all this in my state. It’s not only physically, but it’s mentally damaged her as well.

"My daughter is scarred for life. I’m so cross. I’m going to sue the school and I will take it as far as I can.”

Ismah is due to go back to hospital for another X-ray next week and is expected to be in plaster for another six weeks.

She has still not returned to school.

Headteacher Jane Frankish said the school in was carrying out a “full investigation” but declined to comment further.