School removing support, plea for VI knowledge

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Hello. There has been a lot of supportive chat this week so I’m hoping for some more.
Ds has low vison. He has patchy support in school, initially a 1-1 plus an iPad. Now blown up work and an iPad.
He’s 8 and not had the best behaviour record. Last year was terrible, speaking to other parents they had the same experience. This year has been better. No cheek, doing his homework, generally nicer. He learned joined up writing in a week, last years teacher said it was too hard.
Getting to my point, someone from the council comes out once or twice a term to over see his support. She has just emailed to say he’s pissing about with the iPad rather than getting on with work so she’s recommending removing it and requesting I get him a magnifier. I replied saying that he’s never used a magnifier, hasn’t had the assessment to see what would be suitable and the pissing about needs to stop but could we not make a hasty decision.
She emailed back saying she does all the assessments to I would just have to bring a magnifier from Home.
I’m going to see the class teacher on Monday. I want to say this is a behaviour issue, I will 100% support punishments but removing his aid seems the wrong move.
For clarity the minimum he can read is font 24 so photocopies are A3.

Hi,
I've no experience with VI, but my first thoughts would be to speak with your son and ask him if he has been messing with it and ask the teacher his/her views. I presume you haven't got an EHC Plan - if use of an ipad was on there, they can't just take it away.

How does your son feel about having it taken away - is he okay about using a magnifier? Does he accept why it's been taken away and will now not mess around? Does he deny messing around? Could this be in any way a resource issue - they need the ipad for someone else i.e. are you confident that he is actually messing around?
I feel it's totally inappropriate to take it off him as a punishment - it's a tool to help him learn. If they need to, they should be able to restrict what he can do on it or pay closer attention to what he is doing. If he is messing around, why is he messing around - is he bored - is the work not set at an appropriate level - is it too difficult, so he's avoiding doing it. Does he need a movement break?

Not sure that's very helpful, but I've found that even when my son was younger, it was worth getting his perspective, as he would often mention something relevant that the staff had failed to mention.

Hope you get it sorted/x

Thanks calmed.
I’m sure he’s messing about, he has terrible concentration which I thought they were working on. He has to move a lot to manage his vision, but that quickly slips into doing anything but what he’s supposed to.
We’re in Scotland so no ECHP but honestly I can’t follow the system at all. His iPad comes from the council not the school, I know there has definitely been supply issues on the school side but I thought his was fine.
I’m trying to calm down but honestly it just feels like they are punishing him. They are not taking into account that he’s not a great student to start off with.
I’m going to try and seek out an advocate of some kind because in the endless meetings I’m split between removing him from school and blaming myself for having the worst child in the world.
Parents night on Friday too, never heard a good world about him yet.

Wee bump for the Sunday crowd.

Another shameless bump. I’ve spoken to ds and he was quite hurt that it could be taken away. I’ve been honest and says if he can improve his behaviour I will fight to keep it but he’s got to work with me.
I want to speak to the school tomorrow and ask for copies of his assessments so far and to set up system to monitor his behaviour daily.
Talking to people suggests that I don’t want to put the specialists nose out of joint and I’m going to try and bite my tongue but honestly, all she could would be withdraw her termly “checks” and I can’t see what that would do.
Any one else have any ideas?

It sounds as if they need to get an Educational Psychologist involved to look into the issues around concentration and attention. I would have thought support with that would be better than taking the iPad away.

Does he get teaching materials put into large font for him?