Abstract: In school sports injury cases, the age of students plays a vital role in the identification of school's duty of care. However, the current judicial practice has a misunderstanding of school's obligations of "education, management and protection", which is not conducive to safeguarding the basic rights and interests of students and their guardians, nor to improving school's enthusiasm for organizing campus sports activities. The study, based on 241 judgments, concludes that school's duty of care can be divided into three aspects: precautionary safety education, in-process supervision and post-injury treatment. In both the precautionary safety education and the post-injury treatment stages, there is basically no connection between students' age and school's duty of care, while in the in-process supervision stage, there is a negative correlation between students' age and school's duty of care. In the future judicial practice, judge's determination of school's liability should be carried out in strict accordance with civil conduct capacity, civil conduct capacity to predict danger and control capacity. For people with limited civil conduct capacity, school's duty of care should be subdivided into three age stages - 9 to 12 years old, 13 to 15 years old and 16 to 17 years old.

Key words: age, duty of care, school physical injury, liability of school, capacity for civil conduct