Disadvantaged children across England are set to receive laptops and tablets

[ITGuyNW]

Lend?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-53026221

[highsky]

LA ones:

Acer Travelmate B3

 

Windows 10 Pro Education

Intel® Celeron® N4020 processor Dual-core 1.10 GHz

Intel® UHD Graphics 600 shared memory

11.6" HD (1366 x 768) 16:9

4 GB, DDR4 SDRAM

64 GB Flash Memory

[mavhc]

Are they actually in Windows 10 S mode? Do they also magically have Chrome installed?

[Primus]

Lend?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-53026221[ATTACH=CONFIG]58349[/ATTACH]

 

Yes the device is on loan to the student and eventually is meant to be returned to the school.

[highsky]

The devices will not be owned by the school and are on loan to the students.

Could you add some more details on this one?

Thanks.

[highsky]

I haven't powered on yet.

The DFE paper handout shows Windows 10 and mentions trial O365

[ITGuyNW]

Yes the device is on loan to the student and eventually is meant to be returned to the school.

Have you got the DFE info on that?

 

Thanks

[Boredguy]

Have you got the DFE info on that?

 

Thanks

 

Its in the link in the very first post @executiverocker

"Schools and colleges will be able to keep their laptops and tablets once they have reopened."

[6Foot2]

Its in the link in the very first post @executiverocker

"Schools and colleges will be able to keep their laptops and tablets once they have reopened."

 

Screenshot of the page with relevant text highlighted.

 

[Anothername]

We received 6 of these HP 255 G7 laptops for our looked after children delivered to the LA. They are very locked down and even the admin side is somewhat locked. We managed to finally get the Admin passwords after a member of the LA spent several days trying to get them, but they were told it was the BIOS password they received which it was not from the xma help desk. Anyone have an idea on what program is mentioned to unlock the BIOS:

 

"3. Unlock the device BIOS

a. Follow the instructions provided by XMA which will be correct for your device type. This usually includes running a program “as administrator” which removes password protection from the BIOS and enables network and USB boot options, but please refer to instructions from the XMA support team."

 

Even booting from USB is locked out, so you can't do much without the BIOS password. Really frustrating. Not to mention the auto login working a few times, then stopped. We had a student who used one and set a user password, but did not know what he set it too. Had to remove the password via command due to the admin side being locked down and user account settings greyed out.

[gmonks]

Thanks to elsiegee40 for moving this BTRD.

 

Received the following email from my LA this morning:

 

Further to your email sent regarding delivery of the 7 devices to your school yesterday.

 

...They will remain centrally managed for a period of time and come with mobile device management, anti-virus, filtering etc. The devices are currently owned by NCC and our Children’s Services colleagues are working with NP Law on how to legally transfer these over to the school. It’s anticipated this will happen for September to allow for children moving schools over the summer devices to be registered to the correct school, as the device will stay with the student and not the school.

 

Once we have the legal information in place, we can then communicate out to schools about transferring them over to include giving out the passwords and removing them from the DfE controlled MDM/Filtering. In the meantime, unfortunately, this is not possible.

 

[synaesthesia]

Thanks to elsiegee40 for moving this BTRD.

 

Received the following email from my LA this morning:

 

Is that right? All the documentation say the devices belong to the school after the students have left...

[masmith]

Hi, Could I be cheeky and ask if anyone has a copy of the form they will be getting the parent / student / carer to sign when they collect the laptop ? looking to see what others are doing so our forms look right...

[DrCheese]

They should have just asked if we wanted them locked down on the order form - It would have saved them a boat load of time.

[pete]

Is that right? All the documentation say the devices belong to the school after the students have left...

 

I think individual councils/LAs are making it up as they go along in the absence of decent government guidance / communication.

 

Here (Lincolnshire), schools/Trusts are asked to sign a form making it very clear that the device is the property and responsibility of the school and that no-one should ask the council for anything in relation to the laptops post-delivery.

[gmonks]

Is that right? All the documentation say the devices belong to the school after the students have left...

 

I thought the same, but I asked my LA about passwords to image / install additional software and received the reply that I quoted.

[Anothername]

We were pretty much told the same thing and our LA emailed us a Sale and Purchase of Devices agreement which would transfer the devices over to the school and we would be liable to pay £1.00 if demanded by the Council.

[MYK-IT]

Finally received the email to register and order, at midnight over the weekend...

 

Attempted to login this morning (and I assume every other school currently is...) as the website is inaccessible... timing out!

 

Hmm, been trying to access https://techsource.computacenter.com/en/ since yesterday, with no luck...

 

Just realised that Chrome doesn't like it, so Edge it is :/

[pete]

Updated progress info on the scheme:

 

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892510/Devices_and_4G_wireless_routers_data_ad_hoc_stats.pdf

 

of note is this on the top of page 3:

 

Laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers are being given to local authorities and academy trusts, who will own the devices and distribute them to families, children and young people.

 

which may explain why ownership of social care device differs depending on whether you're in an academy trust or not.

[kennysarmy]

and this:

 

"Laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers are set up with security and safeguarding settings by the

Department for Education’s delivery partner, Computacenter. "

 

Which suggests we won't be able to reimage them with our own Windows 10 image?

[paulkerton]

and this:

 

"Laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers are set up with security and safeguarding settings by the

Department for Education’s delivery partner, Computacenter. "

 

Which suggests we won't be able to reimage them with our own Windows 10 image?

 

I believe everyone is locked out of the BIOS with a password that they won't share, and they're configured to boot from SSD/HDD and not USB, so no. No imaging as of yet.

[Boredguy]

and this:

 

"Laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers are set up with security and safeguarding settings by the

Department for Education’s delivery partner, Computacenter. "

 

Which suggests we won't be able to reimage them with our own Windows 10 image?

 

Correct, you have to request the code if you are the designated person for your Trust to be able to reinstall it to your requirements, but unless you have offsite filtering already, you might as well just leave that headache til after summer once the DfE provision expires and you get them back from your Y10 students at that point.

[Jobos]

We've got our 8 HP 255 laptops sitting here and I started looking at them today. I've not used any form of MDM before and reading through this thread seems to indicate that installing Office locally (that's when I have the admin password) will be a waste of time as it will be over written when MDM refreshes the laptop. Have I understood that correctly? If so the laptops might as well be released to students as they are.

 

Edit: Further to the above. If I make changes to the local policy will the changes be overwritten too?

Edited June 17, 2020 by Jobos

[DrCheese]

you might as well just leave that headache til after summer once the DfE provision expires and you get them back from your Y10 students at that point.

lol, optimistic

 

Depends what the DFE do - They'll need to actively lock students out of devices to force some of them to return them.

[Boredguy]

Well the info said the web filtering was only until October, so......