For example, in El-Sheik v Australian Capital Territory Schools Authority & Anor (1999) Aust. Torts Reports 81-522 a decision of the Supreme Court of the ACT delivered in August 1999, an award of $770,000 was made against a school authority to compensate a 15-year-old high school student for injuries he received when he was kicked by another student during the lunch break.

In September 1991 Romel El-Sheik and another boy were engaged in a form of martial arts activity when the other boy who, according to one of the school boys was 'sort of doing one of his kung fu moves', kicked Romel hard in the leg.

Unfortunately what for many other children may have been a minor injury, for Romel, who had a pre-existing condition known as thrombocytopenia, the kicking incident had disastrous consequences.

After the kick to his leg Romel developed a syndrome in which pressure to the lower leg causes lack of blood supply and death of tissue. Over the course of the next six years he had various operations including a blood transfusion, a tendon transfer and removal of his spleen. Since 1995 he had been receiving psychiatric treatment for his negative reaction to the ongoing treatment. Some eight years after the original injury he had been left with permanent scarring, continuing pain, and in the opinion of the court, for all practical purposes was unemployable.

The court held that a teacher who had stopped the fight, only for it to resume after the teacher moved on, was not negligent in his response to the school yard incident. Nor was the school principal, who was responsible for devising and implementing the school yard supervision by the teachers, and, had allocated one teacher to supervise every 50 students during the lunch breaks.

However, the school authority was held to be negligent in not ensuring reasonable care had been taken for Romel's safety. The court said that a school authority had a special responsibility to take care for the safety of its pupils because of 'the notorious immaturity and inexperience of school pupils and their propensity for mischief'. The area where the injury occurred was well known as a place where fights broke out between the students, and the supply of a teacher to supervise the area would have minimised the risk to the students. The school authority was therefore liable to compensate the injured student for his injuries.

The cases confirm that there is no fixed and predictable teacher-student safe supervisory ratio. What amounts to reasonable care in each case will be decided on its own particular facts. The amount of supervision schools should provide for children depends on factors such as the age and sense of responsibility of the children, the size of the group, how long the children are to be left alone and the schools' past knowledge and experience of the students' behaviour.

Schools are at a much greater risk of being held liable where the incident involves students who are known to be violent. In those circumstances the risk of misbehaviour and consequent accident and injury would be likely to be seen as foreseeable.