by Alan Smith and Claire McWethy

A boy who suffered a broken collar bone in an accident at a Maidstone school was left in pain for almost two hours waiting for an ambulance.

Yahya Amarzouk, a Year 8 pupil at Maplesden Noakes, banged his head and temporarily lost consciousness after being propelled to the ground.

The Buckland Road school called 999 and also alerted the 13-year-old’s parents, but far from being “rushed” to hospital, the ambulance never arrived.

His father Taoufiq Amarzouk said: “I got to the school about 50 minutes after the incident to find him in a wheelchair. The ambulance hadn’t arrived but the school was brilliant.

“They had done everything they could for him by way of first aid, but we waited and waited and eventually after an hour and fifty minutes, I said enough is enough and took Yahya to A&E myself in my car. It was a bad injury so I didn’t want to move him really. I was fuming about it.”

The boy was found to have broken his collar bone and sent home with pain-killers, although he was told the fracture was so serious he may need surgery.

Yahya, who lives in Mansfield Walk, Maidstone, does not know exactly how the injury happened because he was knocked over from behind and blacked out, but his father suspects it was just a joke which went wrong.

After investigating the incident, which happened shortly before 2pm on Tuesday, September 26, the school concluded it had been an accident.

Head teacher Richard Owen said he was satisfied the school had done everything they could for the youngster.

He said: “We appreciate the ambulance service is under a huge strain, but the delay was a concern.”

A spokesman for South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust said: “We have a duty to prioritise immediately life-threatening calls, and while we are working hard to improve response times across our region, there are times when demand for our services means we are unable to reach some patients as quickly as we would like.

“We would like to offer our apologies to the patient, his family and everyone involved. We appreciate he would have been in a great deal of pain and discomfort and the delay will have caused everyone additional distress. We wish him a good recovery.”