Being struck on the head by a football, knocked down by a falling bookcase, overworked and exposed to asbestos are among the hazards school staff in Oxfordshire have claimed compensation for The Oxford Mail has obtained a list of compensation claims from Oxfordshire County Council under the Freedom of Information Act, which reveals that almost £20,000 has been paid out to school staff since September 2004.

A staff member at the former Speedwell First School received £12,302 for slipping, while a falling object at Hagbourne CoE Primary School in Didcot cost the council £7,250.

A further 13 claims for compensation are still outstanding, including one for exposure to asbestos during refurbishment of the boiler room at Edith Moorhouse School, Carterton, in the early 1980s.

An employee at Iffley Mead Special School in Oxford is claiming for compensation after being struck on the head by a football kicked by a pupil, while another claim has been lodged by someone who was struck by part of a serving hatch in a food kiosk at Didcot Girls' School.

A falling bookcase which struck a staff member at Ashbury with Compton Beauchamp CoE Primary has prompted another claim.

Mark Forder, pictured, Oxfordshire secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) urged teachers to make claims for compensation if they were under stress because of negligence.

He said: "Accidents at work are not uncommon so I would expect at any one time we might have a few of these on our books.

"There's not really a compensation culture among teachers but, if they do make a claim, we can provide legal advice. We occasionally get claims relating to strees caused by negligence.

"We are concerned at the number of heads leaving their posts through stress - at any time in Oxfordshire there's probably half a dozen situations like this.

"We often deal with cases to do with the behaviour of pupils and occassionally violence by pupils. In some ways we think our members should take a harder line. They tend to put up with it and are too ready to accept these things as part of the job."

Oxfordshire's education spokesman John Mitchell said: "The presumption is that financial recompense is sought for injury resulting from incidents which, it is argued, could have been foreseen/prevented and for which, it is therefore argued, schools/OCC were therefore responsible.

"These cases are very time-consuming given the need to determine whether or not the schools/OCC were indeed responsible, as the claimants would argue."