School invoicing for broken ipad ? fair or not

Dear all

I just want to test the waters with this one. My 6 year old son is in mainstream school with an EHCP and 1:1. He has profound sensory issues and when dysregulated can bite done on hard objects. This rarely happens and has not happened in school until last week, when he bit down on an ipad. The response of school is to invoice us for the cost of replacing. Is this reasonable. To me it feels inherently unfair as the damage was not intentional and a direct result of his dysregulation. Furthermore I do not have an understanding of what happened before to lead to this outcome?? 

I have told the school that I think an investigation of what happened should be there immediate course of action rather than asking for money. They disagree.

Any thoughts welcome..

Thank you

Parents
  • That's a debatable issue. Schools have a huge lack of funding at the moment so they are not going to be wanting to pay out for every broken iPad. It may not have been intentional but there is no doubt the iPad was broken by your son. I'm not sure fair would be the word I'd use but I think the school are well within their rights to ask for the money. It is hard as your son obviously didn't do it to break the iPad. Could he be given a hard chew and taught he can bite down on that but not other objects?

  • Thank you it is good to hear other peoples views

Reply Children
  • No problem. I work in a school so I can see it from their point of view. Having said that. I would question whether the school have understood that this is a need to bite down as opposed to a temper tantrum as there is a big difference between those scenarios. I don't think it'd make much difference as to whether you had to pay for it. But I don't think it's important the school have understood that.