Claiming from the school for son's stolen property.

Debt_Free_Chick

careless wrote:

I would be happy to do this if the model had been stolen from my son's bag. The fact is that the teacher had taken it to 'look after'. She did not take proper care of it.

I think this is the debatable point. In order to claim that she/the school was responsible, you would have to show that they had been negligent i.e. did not take reasonable steps to ensure that the item was stored securely.

Leaving it out in a public place e.g. on the desk would, I suggest, be negligent. Putting in a locked cupboard wouldn't. Putting in a cupboard that was not locked debatable. Where was the cupboard situated? Who had access? When did they have access?

As a teacher myself, I would expect to replace personal property that I had lost or damaged.

But she didn't lose or damage it. Someone stole it from the cupboard.

As a parent, if my son caused damage to school property through his own fault, I would expect to have to make it right.

But, again, I'm not convinced we can attribute any fault/blame to the teacher.

My other son scratched a neighbour's car slightly and accidentally whilst falling off his bike - no question that he apologised and we paid to have it fixed.

Presumably your son owned up or someone saw him. Same applies to the theft, I'm afraid. It's a case of finding who is to blame and then holding them responsible.

The teacher would only be to blame if they failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that the item was kept safely. As I say, I think it's a case of "six and two-threes". The teacher put the item away, but it depends on where and how safe one would reasonably expect that to be.

Sorry, but it's either your insurance or write it off to experience. Unless you can firmly pin the blame on the teacher.

To be honest, that's why we have insurance - to cover those situations where the loss cannot be firmly pinned on someone else.

HTH

blackcateddie

Wow, some of you out there are not nice people!!!

Good on you careless to make your son stand on his own two feet and be able to iron. How old fashioned to see some of the comments here about mowing the lawn etc in preference to teaching him to take care of himself.

My son has been at Secondary school since Sept and has managed to lose quite a bit of PE kit and the school's attitude is less than admirable - he got detention for telling them! now if he loses something obviously he won't tell the teacher just in case he's punished.

I would write to the governors, that way they have to respond, I would remind them that they are acting in 'loco parentis' and as such have a duty of care to your child. The teacher may have taken reasonable steps to ensure the item was kept safe but that doesn't absolve them of any guilt - and just because they may have to pay the first part of any claim doesn't absolve them either.

My view is that she took responsibility for the items and that the loss is down to the school, since she put the item away. Surely the school is supposed to teach personal resposibility, in which case how about them taking resposnibility for the teacher's actions

Andy_L

mlmoneysaver wrote:

Here's mine: http://www.directline.com/home/HomePolicy.pdf

Now it defines a visitor on page 9 but that's the only instance. What I fail to understand is if I have contents insured to the value of x (i.e. my contents), a visitor has a (say) laptop stolen, I don't see how that is covered as the insrance company can just say I don't have adequate cover which should have been x + laptop price?

No, the total value would be an issue if every thing was lost (eg in a house fire). If some scroat breaks in and steals your TV and your visiting friends laptop, the total cost of the claim is under the contents insurance limit.

They might refuse to pay out because the laptop is a single high value item that has to be specified on the policy, depends if it's a £350 dell cheapie or a £2k high end machine.

courtjester

I would think that visitor cover would have the condition that there was no other 'more specific' cover before paying out - i.e insurance held by the visitor covering their property whilst in your house (or rather away from their home).