A pupil who choked on a pen lid had to be flown to a hospital in Liverpool last week.

Ballakermeen High School headteacher Adrienne Burnett wrote a letter to parents before the school broke up for Christmas.

Mrs Burnett said the incident happened in a year seven maths class.

She told Manx Radio: ’Mr Price was busy teaching in his maths lesson when he noticed a disturbance at the back. A child was choking.

’Thankfully, he’d had first aid training and he was able to go and try and help the boy, he realised very quickly he was choking, slapped him on the back which did not do anything.

’Fortunately, the teacher knew how to do the Heimlich manoeuvre and was able to dislodge the pen lid which was stuck in the boy’s throat, enough that he could breathe but certainly not enough that he was no longer in distress.

’The emergency services were called, they were absolutely brilliant.’

The headteacher said three emergency vehicles arrived ’within minutes’.

She added: ’It really was a magnificent effort. I’m so proud of the emergency services and the fantastic job they do.

’There was an assessment done at the hospital and there was concern that an operation would have to take place on the boy’s lungs because if the pen lid got into the lungs, that would have been very dangerous indeed.

’An assessment was done and that decision was made to fly him to Alder Hey Hospital where he had the treatment there.

’Staff in the school here have been in floods of tears all week.’

The boy was back at school on the last day of term.