Some thoughts:

- If you replace it with other laptop, people can find out. Serial numbers can be compared either manually, or by wherever software is pre-installed by school.

- Likely you cannot get the exact same laptop as was given to you. Even models with the same name can come with different configurations causing issues in the future.

- If you can buy a replacement laptop, (since you have somewhere to transfer the data to) why don't you just say this to school and remove parents from this exchange?

- Being secretive about it will likely cause more issues than just saying what happened.

- Schools may have insurance or deals covering all such cases, so it may not cost them anything. Consider how many laptops they have and how many may get accidentally broken every year.

You're right, I can't believe I didn't think of this. I can get a bit out of hand but thanks this really helped.

There are better ways of achieving what you want.

When you say "broke" what does you mean? Someone might be able to give you advice about fixing it.

You should probably work out a plan for telling your school, explaining things you could do to replace the laptop and also why you do not want your father involved.

Get help with the wording of the letter.

I'd like to think that teachers would see this as a sign of maturity and would work with you (clearly a non-malicious person) to repair or replace the laptop, but perhaps I am ridiculously optimistic.

Thankyou so much, I was so worried that I forgot the more reasonable ways of fixing this problem. Your optimism is reassuring, thanks again:)

Transfering the data or even the whole harddisk is possible. However if the scool has registered the serial numbers of the laptops, for example for warranty tracking, you're out of luck.

Okay, thank you anyway.