Schools and iPads

The school my girls go to is an 'iPads for Learning' school and we 'rent' them at £30 each per month, they get replaced every third year (IIRC) and repairs are much cheaper than High Street prices (although the cost increases with each repair).

They find them very useful as everything they need (timetables, homework, rewards etc) are all on there and updated in realtime.

There's more stuff here

The restrictions on use are quite lenient so they can use them for Netflix/YouTube etc at home too.

£30 each per month, they get replaced every third year

£1,080 per iPad, which has cost the company supplying them about £400 (education price minus VAT and bulk purchase discount, which is ~£90). And you’re responsible for their upkeep / damage?

I appreciate that you probably have to subsidise kids from less well-off families with that subscription but instinct says that someone is making an absolute killing out of it, and it’s not the school.

I don't like having parents pay for them - it's hard enough as it is. One of my friends in England was saying they have to pay for them.

Here in Wales our kids get free Chromebooks, which are clearly a lot cheaper and do the job better IMO by virtue of having a keyboard. They do most of their work on them, so they kids learn the IT skills, and the teachers receive work electronically and mark it and return it all without paper changing hands. They also do admin stuff using class charts which means we as parents can see all their work, assignments and timetable. The actual work is done on a Google suite setup called Hwb Cymru where their google accounts are.

It's a bit rough around the edges but I'm actually pretty impressed. I at first thought it extravagant, but these are cheap Chromebooks at about £150 retail, and the Welsh Govt must've ordered hundreds of thousands of them so got a huge discount. The kids keep them for 5 years so it probably works out cheaper than a shit ton of exercise books.

I've got 2 kids, 15 and 12 and have never heard of it. I wouldn't want to pay for them.

Primary school used to have Chromebooks, but they stayed in school.

@johndoh you're having your pants pulled down and nailed to the floor.

My old school tried it and quietly let the idea die and took them back in and instead used them as class sets for in lessons.

I appreciate that you probably have to subsidise kids from less well-off families with that subscription but instinct says that someone is making an absolute killing out of it, and it’s not the school.

Probably a member of SLT and a relative or the MAT sponsor getting their cut too.

Our school is looking to replace all the iPads as their lease contract is coming up for renewal.

As a governor I have suggested going with android tablets on lease instead as they are about 1/3 of the cost and all the apps we have subscriptions for are available on android too. The lease company supports both so I can't work out why we pay the extra for iPads.

These are for use in the school only so don't get issued to each kid to take home.

I have no idea why businesses and schools are so wed to apple given the costs.

Where we live every primary school and secondary school pupil gets given one. It’s called Inspire Learning.  No charge to parents (other than via council tax I guess). I’ve not heard of any parents being charged for damage, I think that comes under Rule #1 type guidance. I’ve got three kids who have had them for 4 years or so and they have not damaged or lost theirs

It makes sense to get kids used to working remotely and using IT and it helped during Covid. I haven’t seen the transformation in teaching delivery that we were promised though, generally teaching is delivered in the same way but better out of class communication via Teams andc other apps.

It feels like a natural evolution but certainly not transformational

The school my girls go to is an ‘iPads for Learning’ school and we ‘rent’ them at £30 each per month, they get replaced every third year (IIRC) and repairs are much cheaper than High Street prices (although the cost increases with each repair).

that is insane. Is that a state school? I’m staggered that they could implement that.

Leased Surface Gos here. Can't remember what we pay but I'm sure it's <£30/m (again for a three-year lease term).

Irritatingly, while Office 365 works fine on Macs, they've configured it so the kids can't use non-Windows devices.

Thanks all. It helps that the boys are totally ambivalent, other than seeing the device as a responsibility they could do without. It definitely smacks of some kind of deal which must be making someone money, otherwise they'd focus on a proper digital strategy which pupils can benefit from across different platforms, rather than just spunking iPads everywhere.

To be honest, if they'd asked for us to actually pay for the things I would have said no straight off!

We use Chromebooks at our school. Every pupil has one. Parents have consented to pay for repairs, but we haven't charged for any so far. I have replaced well over 100 screens though.

They actually work incredibly well as a an educational tool in the classroom and for homework.

I teach in the same region as @franksinatra tbh they're a pain as they don't quite do as you'd want. Teachers end up doing most of the stuff on laptops then the kids use iPads to access but it doesn't quite transfer across.
Just realised that assessed assignments will probably have to be hand written and research from textbooks which is a retrograde step from what it should be but that's a technology sqa issue.

£30 per month is an absolute con and I’ve no doubt the school will be getting a commission but the vendor will be raking it in. You should stop paying immediately.

Oh here the iPads are free to users and we've just had the refresh. They are set up to not have free internet access and when apple classroom is finally working correctly staff can lock and view pads in class.

squirrelking
Free Member
@johndoh you’re having your pants pulled down and nailed to the floor

we don’t have a great deal of choice - we could buy outright then (as has happened several times) we’d have to pay full price for repairs. It’s a bit of six and two threes and half a dozen of the other.

Big edit - £13 each 😬 not sure where I got £30 from.

Oh!

Well that changes the equation somewhat 😂

Rounding up, I have two of them 😹

I did some trials of iPads in my class a good few years ago and was less than impressed. Partly because our school network wasn't really set up for it, but also because without a stylus or a keyboard they're a bit limited for creating work.

I'd be really interested to hear what folks' experiences of them are now we're a few years further and people have (hopefully) a bit more support with them.

Our kids get to take their Chromebooks home, which is great as they can continue the same homework with the same accounts etc. You can however also log into Hwb on your own computer too if you need to.

They can generally access the internet but the obvious stuff is blocked.

partly because our school network wasn’t really set up for it, but also because without a stylus or a keyboard they’re a bit limited for creating work.

in our experience they aren’t directly meant for creating work, more supporting the learning with guidance. They still have school books in the traditional sense. Yes there are some things they can choose to do on the iPad, but it’s not mandatory.

My teen kids have to use one for school. I'm of mixed opinion.
Multiple options for laying, can get one for use in school only that they borrow from the library, can't take it home and isn't theirs.
Could buy outright with different options for insurance/replacements or pay monthly again different rates for insurance/replacement. I pay £13 a month for my lads iPad (after he moved into mine and his mother removed the iPad she gave him from his ownership 😡) and I'll be handing it in for it's second repair tomorrow which I have no intention of paying for.

It has benefits in doing work from home, but he could do that on my laptop and I wouldn't have the constant worry about what he's up to and how much time he spends on it.
Drawbacks for me are that he is so reliant on, I accept this is somewhat my doing (also potential ADHD), but it seems somewhat unnecessary to me.

Re why Apple products.

Our web stats on education website and our newsletter are fascinating.

Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - Windows machines and Chromebook dominate about 85% of our users.

England - almost a reversal with about 70% on Apple products.

Anyone would think England has a semi privatised education system....

I've had to buy two for my daughters. First time i went to the school to ask the logic of the ipad over cheaper alternatives. I didn't get a satisfactory answer. Ended up sucking it up for the sake of the kids. I think they would have been far better served with a Chromebook.

This is Surrey btw.

My kids school did the iPad thing. We had an evening of serious hard sell from an external provider but decided against it. 1/3 of kids had them and they were very rarely used in class. Teachers just didn't have the time to create new lessons that used them to their full potential.

3 years later there is no mention of them at all. Cheap Chromebook at home was much more useful

My daughter's old school used iPads which were paid for over 12 months at a rate that reflected RRP - educational discount. The iPad became our property at the end of the term. A decent cover was thrown in and we didn't have any breakages in 5 years and no real IT hassles.

I was a bit puzzled as to how the tablet form factor could be efficient for writing, creating etc. but they all seemed to manage. I did offer to get my daughter a bluetooth keyboard to use with her iPad but this was refused on the basis of "not being cool".

The use of iPads was not compulsory but the few who went with Android devices did experience a few issues.

Yeah our Chromebooks are integral to the school, everything is done on them by the look of it. That's the benefit of giving one to every kid.

I am not convinced of the logic of giving them to everyone across the board.

It's much easier for admin and teachers if every student has an identical device. My daughter's school issues them with Chromebooks, they seem to work well. I don't know about iPads because of Apple's closed ecosystem, I guess it will all come down to the quality of the apps and admin support.

It’s much easier for admin and teachers if every student has an identical device

And also leads to shortsightedness (see Singapore) and learning focused/facilitated by tech, ignoring group work, outdoor learning, practical tasks etc...

Yes we need tech, but not so much

The devices don't replace any of those things, they replace pen and paper.

The company I work for has done the iPad roll-outs in Glasgow & Edinburgh (I think around 100,000 of them in total...). It's not a project I've been involved with but I doubt we're making £100's on each iPad. Looks like Edinburgh Council paid £17.5m for their 44,000 iPad rollout - not sure how that stacks up though as although that's just under £400 per iPad it doesn't seem to include any costs for actually provisioning & managing them but maybe that's accounted for elsewhere (I think we do full IT outsource for them). Pretty sure they're free to the pupils, other schools/councils charging £30/month seems excessive...

£400 per iPad doesn't seem like good value vs Chromebooks.

The devices don’t replace any of those things, they replace pen and paper.

In our experience, they don't replace pen and paper either – both our girls still do the vast majority of their work in exercise books.

I bought my daughter (older than school age) a top of the range iPad Pro from John Lewis for £30/month. Just about to have it repaired (dent in the side where the pen attaches, so it won't charge) via Adrian Flux Gadget insurance that costs circa £50/year, albeit there will be an excess to pay

£400 per iPad doesn’t seem like good value vs Chromebooks.

Depends a bit on lifespans (e.g. are they both just 3 years or will the iPads be deployed longer) and also the iPads presumably have a higher resale value at the end of that term (I hope they don't all end up in landfill or the schools paying for them to be disposed of...).

I also don't actually know how they're used, what apps etc., I wouldn't say a Chromebook is a like for like alternative (but could be fine for the use case). Presumably someone somewhere did some independent analysis of the options. From an IT services provider perspective I could certainly see managing a mass deployment of iPads would be more appealing than the same for Chromebooks and additional management costs would likely have been factored in.

I hope they don’t all end up in landfill or the schools paying for them to be disposed of…

At our girls' school, there is the option to buy at the end of the life (which I have found out is 3.5 years – that means they get two devices during their school-life if they stay on in 6th Form). The cost is reasonable (£100 IIRC). So a total cost of £1,092 over seven years isn't too bad (and, assuming the device is in good condition, I reckon they could be sold at a small profit on Ebay).

Presumably someone somewhere did some independent analysis of the options.

Let me guess you're an Apple fan? 🙂

People in IT are wedded to their favourites and that's what gets factored in. As for management costs, they've just rolled out G Suite and the devices are bound into that. I don't think there are any management costs on the end user side for Chromebooks besides damage repair or replacement.

From an IT services provider perspective I could certainly see managing a mass deployment of iPads would be more appealing than the same for Chromebooks

Why so?

So a total cost of £1,092 over seven years isn’t too bad

Does look quite bad from where I'm sitting.

Does look quite bad from where I’m sitting.

But a new iPad is £500 (I doubt buying one at the start of year 7 would last through to the end of year 13 so you'd probably end up buying two in that time anyway) and any repairs have a fixed cost of £50 which is significantly less than you would pay elsewhere. Ohh, and they come with a case too (whoo hoo).

Let me guess you’re an Apple fan?

I'm an iPad fan for sure (for my needs, no idea whether they're the best option for use in schools), I do also have an iPhone but it's a company supplied SE2 that I rarely use. Apple as a company I can't say I'm a fan of, but then the same applies to Alphabet/Google.

Admittedly I don't know what MDM tools are available for Chromebooks but I know some of the tools for Apple devices are pretty mature now (although I didn't have a great experience with using Airwatch for an iPhone deployment several years ago...).

Admittedly I don’t know what MDM tools are available for Chromebooks

They don't really need MDM as such. You don't install apps on them.

But a new iPad is £500

Yep and a new Chromebook is £150. What's bad is being led down a route that costs more money for everyone and has no benefit. Because someone was sold the wrong thing.

Yep and a new Chromebook is £150. What’s bad is being led down a route that costs more money for everyone and has no benefit. Because someone was sold the wrong thing.

That's the biggest issue for me: the expense of this vs chromebooks which in our experience work very well for administrating homework. Also the apparent absence of any particular plan to develop a more interesting learning environment using technology (let alone one which is enabled by iPads in particular). It just doesn't stack up.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji'; background-color: #eeeeee;">People in IT are wedded to their favourites and that’s what gets factored in.</span>

That so funny, I wish schools would pay attention to our views, realistically they simply want the cheapest option or sometimes what they already have, as they REALLY don't like change. I love my iphone/ipad but not for use in schools. IMO There a terrible device for  secondary schools (IMO), though work well for the youngest primary school kids, as there used to the form factor from home. As for chromebooks, to say there no cost is not quite right, g-suite requires a £30 license for every device, and it is a license for a specific device, so if the device dies you need to buy a new chromebook and new license. As for android devices, when ever this is looked at, we cannot find a reasonably priced/good management solution

I have to say, I love to see school try to get any money out of parents locally, we had numerous free COVID DFE device returned broken, with no apology and many not returned at all, with no recourse.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji'; background-color: #eeeeee;">They don’t really need MDM as such.</span>

Man you really are a comedian, devices given to children that aren't locked down 🤣

Yep and a new Chromebook is £150. What’s bad is being led down a route that costs more money for everyone and has no benefit. Because someone was sold the wrong thing.

I can't change the school's equipment policy (which we knew about long before choosing that school), but I think the cost of it is fair.

@johndoh our Air 2 has only just stopped getting OS updates earlier in the year after being out for 8.5 years. I'd say that's good going and short of having crap storage capacity (16gb version) it's never had any bother keeping up.

our Air 2 has only just stopped getting OS updates earlier in the year after being out for 8.5 years. I’d say that’s good going and short of having crap storage capacity (16gb version) it’s never had any bother keeping up.

I have an iPad Mini 3 (which came out late 2014) and it is almost unusable now as it is so slow. Once it has wound itself up, it will stream TV (I use it at work to watch cycling), but any taps on the screen take a few seconds to respond and it can't use the latest iOS (not been able to for over a year IIRC) so I am finding that apps are now not being supported.

^^^ Further to the above, I have just checked and the latest iOS it can run is 9.3.5. iOS 10 came out in late 2016 so it had four years of iOS support*

*I made a typo in the above, the iPad Gen 3 came out in late 2012

I don't doubt that any iPad will keep running for longer, but obviously there are no security updates. So I think the school's policy of changing at 3.5 years makes sense.

Admittedly I don’t know what MDM tools are available for Chromebooks

Google has a whole admin centre dedicated to managing these devices , even down to creating accounts specific to the device and restricting access to onboard things like the camera etc. They can be auto enrolled and restricted so can’t be used outside of the tenant etc etc.

The main problem with iPads is that Apple have, on purpose, made them horrible to try and administer as a shared device (a trolley of 30 that various classes use for example). There is no way of wiping all the browsing and forcing sign out of emails/o365 of the previous user so you can immediately see the problem there. Apple want you to give one to each pupil for them to keep hold of and so the MDM solutions are very much geared around that. And TBH if every child in a school that wanted to use iPads did actually have their own then they are a pretty good tool. The biggest issue is the cost. Schools want to use them as an engagement tool as well but don’t want to buy 1000 of them initially and then 150 new ones each year.

@johndoh we have a gen 4/retina as well and yeah it really struggles and is in the weeds as far as supported apps go (I don't even use it for comics as the 2000ad app is unsupported and I can't be arsed messing about downloading them the hard way). The Air 2 will go the same way but my point was it got 8.5 years of updates and has run fine for that time, perfectly fine for secondary school.

Air 2 has only just stopped getting OS updates earlier in the year after being out for 8.5 years.

Woopty woo. I have a hudle that is still going strong.

The only reason macs are being pushed into to schools is because people like things they are accustomed to and if you get children accustomed to macs they will ask for Mac books when they're in secondary school etc. iPads are used as the cheapest way of getting apple into t people's houses. It's a terrible choice of tool for work.

@thebrick

What has any of that got to do with the post I was originally replying to?

Man you really are a comedian, devices given to children that aren’t locked down

Ok, there is of course some management but I don't think it's quite the same as you would need on an Android/MacOS/Windows device as since everything is cloud based you don't need to manage local software and storage. Happy to be proved wrong though that is only an assumption.

I can’t change the school’s equipment policy (which we knew about long before choosing that school), but I think the cost of it is fair.

Presumably because you have the money. Not sure the family on the breadline with four kids in high school is going to be happy about paying £120/mo.

Presumably because you have the money. Not sure the family on the breadline with four kids in high school is going to be happy about paying £120/mo.

Four of them would be £52 a month (I corrected the price we pay ages ago). And the school has support for families on low incomes.

Genuine question, as I have two kids in school (one year 6, the other in year 11), neither of whose schools have one of these schemes running:

How does the individual child benefit from using a designated, school-provided device for their learning?

Both of ours' schools do use things like MS Teams and Google classroom for school-home communications, which the kids access at home via a couple of cheap Windows laptops we bought a few years ago (during lockdown).

I'm struggling to see the real value in any parent having to pay a monthly subscription to allow their child to have the fullest access to their state education.

I am suspicious that it's actually more to do with making the school/teacher end of the equation more efficient.  That's absolutely fine  - teachers do not have any easy life - but I disagree with parents footing the bill in such a direct way.

I am not convinced of the logic of giving them to everyone across the board.

I'm curious, what criteria would you suggest to determine who gets one and who doesn't?

I’m also not massively happy with the idea of claiming on my insurance or stumping up for a repair or replacement when someone lobs the boy’s bag over a wall or his waterbottle leaks.

That's their problem, surely? They've rolled out iPads to their pupils, they'd have to be mad not to have a comprehensive insurance policy in place or at the very least issue them with protective cases.

I’m curious, what criteria would you suggest to determine who gets one and who doesn’t?

I'd rather it was based on 'we're planning to adopt x, y, z approaches to using technology to educate your kids, please let us know if you need support in providing your kids with tools to access these things'.

That’s their problem, surely? They’ve rolled out iPads to their pupils, they’d have to be mad not to have a comprehensive insurance policy in place or at the very least issue them with protective cases.

Sorry, I wasn't clear: I believe it should be their problem but in this case they're making it ours in the parental consent t&cs.

People are getting free computers and tablets that are not means tested???

So my daughters school has chromebooks for learning (the school was on the vanguard of the program)and we had (compulsory) to buy them a school approved Chromebook when they started Yr 7.   This was 2015 for our eldest and a couple of years later for the next one. Both machines were £400 each, locked down and came with a case. There was no choice unless you were on income support.

How can it be that in the state school system in the same country, some schools give them away for free and some people pay £30 a month for iPads and some people pay £400 per child for a chromebook and presumably some schools just use paper?  its bonkers

Welcome to Britain where things are badly run.

My wife informs me by the way that here in Cardiff we had to pay a one-off £50 for insurance for the full 5 years.

thing is, thing is he sez waving his arms and jabbing his finger @molgrips....thing is!

Actually the chromebook scheme when well implemented works incredibly well. During the pandemic our school was seamless with its online integration and literally within a few days the kids basically had almost the same level of teacher led educational support online that they had before in person. this could be achieved due to the existing infrastructure and skills already taught plus the fact that all kids already had the same machine and knew how to use it. In fact the support was so good it rivalled one of the best private schools in the country which my wife works at.

What I don't understand is just like free school milk why don't things like this get rolled out nationally? Why do schools fall prey to dodgy sales tactics and end up with ipads which simply don't do the same job and why do some pay and some don't.....ahhhhh oh yes

Tories.

Which I guess is why we lost the milk eh maggie?

some people pay £30 a month for iPads

i give up - I corrected myself twice . £13 a month.

What I don’t understand is just like free school milk why don’t things like this get rolled out nationally?

Because in England we've basically divided up and hived off all the schools into a semi-private way of making money from education. So every school is free to make 'individual' decisions - and so they do.
You only need to go to any education show to see how much IT companies are making in profit compared to anyone else involved in education...

You only need to go to any education show to see how much IT companies are making in profit compared to anyone else involved in education…

I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, just because a show has quite a few exhibitors it doesn’t mean they’re all making massive profits (or is there some other indicator you are using to show how much they make? 🤷‍♂️). IT provision in schools is no more expensive than anywhere else, in fact it’s often cheaper and has heavy discounts much like the charitable sector. IT is expensive generally though, rightly or wrongly and there are massive profits to be made but it’s not from ripping off schools.

If you want an example of companies making enormous profits out of schools (and hospitals) , look at PFI. Yet another massive pay out for mates of the Government.