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This is the horrific news of a pupil in a British school who lost all of her fingers leaving her hands badly disfigured after a school’s art lesson. The school has now been given a fine.

An art class – something we might deem fun, creative and a good place to exhibit all of that imaginative talent within us wasn’t so hunky-dory for what we only know through the courts as Student X.

Yes, a student, or Student X, from the east of England (Giles School, Boston), lost almost all of her fingers in an art lesson when she was only sixteen in 2007. The student was using plaster of Paris to make a cast of her hands and as a result, the cast stuck to her hands rendering them trapped within the cast. Despite immediate attention from the school medical staff and other teaching staff, nothing could get the cast off. High temperatures up to 60C can be generated within a plaster and the student was left with severe burns.

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The girl was supposedly told by the teacher to use her hands in the clay to make a mould after which the liquid plaster was meant to be poured into the clay mould. Instead, she put her hand (up to wrist) into a container full of plaster of Paris which caused the mixture to begin hardening round her hands in about 10 minutes and she couldn’t rescue it.

After a complex set of nearly 12 operations, plastic surgeons weren’t able to rescue her hand and left one hand with no fingers and the other hand with only two fingers.

This breaching of the Health and Safety regulations and not informing the Health & Safety Executive of this horrific incident has resulted in landing the school with a £16,500 fine with £2500 in costs.  The incident was only discovered 6 weeks after, by the plastic surgeon in charge of the girl.

Now 18 and after multiple skin grafts, Student X’s hands are still badly disfigured but her lawyer Stephen Hill says she is doing “remarkably well”. Student X has 3 A levels now after returning back to school after the incident. The school now claims that the school is safe from any further disasters and the health and safety regulations are now a lot more stringent which the school has decided to adhere to.