Hi Kate,

We've always overcome this by sing and agreeing with parents that they will insure the laptop for home use. They would need to provide evidence of insurance to the school.

We run a laptop loan scheme for pupils who don't have access otherwise, particularly Disadvantaged Pupils. The loan agreement requires parents to insure the laptop and accept responsibility for it. We provide the full office suite and antivirus software. The laptop is set up so only school IT have admin rights and so only they can add software.

Higher needs funding has been used here to buy software/hardware for pupils with EHCPs if the specific need for the child can be shown to be met by that purchase and that equipment/software isn't a standard purchase for the school. This has proven expensive at times as we don't have stand alone desktops anymore, they are all thin client, and so all purchases have to be a site licence.  Worth being careful with purchases if pupils will move schools as software licences are often site specific even if for just one pupil laptop and can't legally be transferred to another site/school.

Our LA Access Strategy makes it clear that ICT is a school responsibility and we would expect a school to allow the ICT to go home with appropriate agreements/ signatures around insurance and “acceptable use” for learners with and without EHCPs.

Does the pupil have access to an iPhone or tablet?  A few of my pupils have found the speech to text option on the iPhone really useful for completing homework that can then be emailed back to school or printed for handing in.

It is another skill to learn but less demanding on motor skills when they are tired at the end of a school day.

Kind regards

Tracy