A teacher who gave schoolboy Henry Webster first aid after he was attacked with a hammer told the High Court how he remained “quite coherent” despite his grievous head wounds.

PE teacher Rachel Clarke said she was on duty in the corridor outside the sports hall – stopping pupils from exiting into the car park – when a boy ran up shouting that a fight was happening on the tennis courts.

She was “pretty much the first member of staff on the scene” after the January 11, 2007, hammer attack, said Ms Clarke, arriving to glimpse “some bodies moving towards the gate”.

She told London’s High Court: “I could see Henry lying on the floor and it was his head that caught my immediate attention.

“He had his hand up to his head but I could see blood in his hair.

“The severity of the attack was not immediately apparent and, of course, at that stage I had no idea that a hammer had been used.”

She asked another pupil to “get some tissues” to help treat his wounds while she “stayed with Henry and did what I could to try and stop the bleeding”.

Ms Clarke added: “Henry was quite coherent.

“He did not know what he had been hit with and said that he had been kicked and punched while he was on the floor.

“I then recall an ambulance arriving but I do not know who exactly made the call to the ambulance as lots of pupils were saying they had called an ambulance themselves.

“By the time the ambulance arrived, the tennis courts were pretty empty and, as Henry was getting into the ambulance, his mum turned up.”

Addressing suggestions by Henry's legal team that there was a problem with “racism and a gang mentality” within the school, Ms Clarke insisted that the Ridgeway did not have a “particular problem” – or no more than the rest of society.

She added: “I was aware that there was a gang of Asian pupils grouping together, but it was typical for different groups of pupils to hang around together, and each different group tended to have their own particular place they liked to congregate in.”

She had heard no rumour about an impending fight before the clash at the tennis courts, said Ms Clarke.

Occasionally teachers would get wind of such impending trouble and take steps to prevent upcoming fights, she told the court, but in Henry’s case there were no warning signs.

Although the tennis courts were not patrolled by staff at the end of the school day, she said the area was not recognised as a likely trouble spot. Any fights that occurred tended to happen elsewhere, said Ms Clarke. She had “no dealings” with Henry before the attack, said the teacher, but described him as “quiet” and “probably a bit of a loner”, although he had not been long at the Ridgeway and did not seem to belong to a particular clique or group.

Ms Clarke’s evidence came during Henry Webster’s £1 million compensation claim against the Ridgeway Foundation School over the January 2007 hammer attack that almost cost him his life and left him seriously brain damaged.

The school denies all blame for the attack on Henry, pointing out that it took place after school hours, and that the attack was racially motivated.

The hearing at London's High Court continues.