BYOD - Anyone following a BYOD first strategy?

[Zammo]

Hello All

 

I have been asked to look at, with un-biased eyes, how a BYOD scheme could work as opposed to:

 

School funded 1-1

Parental Contributions

 

Now lets set aside questions of whether everyone has a suitable device for now, has anyone else worked with/for a school that has rolled out BYOD at scale? I am aware a number of schools *allow* students in sixth form to bring their own devices on a casual basis, but I am talking more of solutions where bringing a device is expected, and leadership expect to see them used

 

Thanks!

[Steve21]

Unless you're a private school and putting it in as part of the requirements to join, I can't see how you'd ever be able to "force" BYOD participation

 

Bearing in mind even most parental contribution schemes have clauses like being able to loan a device for free during school days etc

 

Run while you can!

 

Steve

[dmj]

I worked for a school where we forced 1:1 devices for all yeargroups. IIRC we started rolling it out around 2015 and it is still running successfully.

in a nutshell.

 

• We planned two years in advance to make sure wifi/FTTP was redundant and upto spec
  
• The initial rollout was with two yeargroups (circa 300 students in each yeargroup), two yeargroups the next year and then each year.
  
• School invested in workshop for chromebook repairs, techs self trained how to solder watching youtube!
  
• School make inital purchase of chromebooks for each student + 20%
  
• The 20% are spare parts and the cost to parents includes this amount
  
• We committed to repairing the devices for 3 years
  
• Device turnaround time for a hardware fix was typically less than 8hrs - any motherboard soldering would get a replacement, log the issue on a postit and resolder the components at a later date so we could get the board back out.
  
• Software issues were typically fixed in under 5min - reimage the device and delete any plugins
  
• Parents with more than one child in school receive a discount (forget the details)
  
• Students with FSM are subsidised 100% by the school
  
• FMS proportion was low, this was an affluent, rural area
  
• Parents pay for the chromebook entirely or by payment plan over two years
  
• Total cost to parents was around £280 for 3 years IIRC it was about £10/month for two years.
  
• School fixes all issues including accidental damage. Intentional damage was charged extra. All repairs were from the stock of 20% spare machines (swapping out parts with other broken kit)
  
• For circa 2000 devices after the scheme rolled out fully, this amounted to one full time tech doing repairs (we did shifts)
  
• Uptake onto scheme was about 98% but pretty much all students had a device of some kind.
  
• There was strain on pastoral groups getting parents onboard - not a technical thing but bear in mind with planning
  
• Some parents sent their kids in with other equipment, macs/windows/linux/chromebooks etc. School didn't oppose it but didn't fix the devices either.
  
• Cost saving on IT suites/ textbooks / paper etc easily paid for wifi upgrades/tech time and subsidies/repairs.
  

Edited May 5, 2023 by dmj

[Steve21]

That’s not BYOD though that’s parental contribution/school owned which OP said they didn’t want

 

Steve

[dmj]

That’s not BYOD though that’s parental contribution/school owned which OP said they didn’t want

 

Steve

 

The scheme we operated was NOT parental contribution or school owned. Parents were expected to buy a device. The school provided the scheme for purchase/warrant/repairs.

[Steve21]

The scheme we operated was NOT parental contribution or school owned. Parents were expected to buy a device. The school provided the scheme for purchase/warrant/repairs.

 

That is literally a parent contribution scheme but hey ho, if you call it different fair enough

 

Steve

[dmj]

That is literally a parent contribution scheme but hey ho, if you call it different fair enough

 

Steve

 

oh ok. I didn't realise. We didn't call it a contribution because they either bought into it or didn't. Contribution sounds like it's some sort of voluntary thing. yes it was voluntary to opt into the scheme, but if they didn't keep up payments there would be a court summons. Hence I didn't recognise it as a a 'contribution'.

 

Full BYOD with a mass of different devices at secondary level? Hell no.

Even on a University campus we barely supported student devices and there was no obligation to use one.

[PotNoodleTech]

This may or may not be helpful but -

 

I've always been uneasy about parental contribution myself, we're not a private school - we don't charge parents 5 grand a year for the priveledge, we dont make pupils pay for books or pencils or paper or anything else that we "force" the pupils to need so why would you force them to use 1:1 devices and then charge them?

 

With 25% FSM we were not keen on going down the parental payment route so funded 1:1 chromebooks ourselves.

 

Couldn't really afford it at the time - so started by buying one year group per year for each year 7 intake. Got 7, 8 9 done then Covid accelerated the process and now totally 1:1.

 

It's the way to go - teachers can teach and pupils can learn in school out of school instantly with one username and password.

 

At £150 - £200 for Lenovo 100e Gen 3 you can have a school full without spending ridiculous money. Just got to tighten up on some of the other random junk that schools spunk thousands a year up the wall on. Start with External cover, Photocopying and Garbage software - can probably save enough to pay for a year groups worth of chromebooks right there.

 

We're so clear about the benefits and our strategy now were even putting money aside into an LEA sustainability fund each year for each trenche of Chromebooks so in year 5 we'll already have enough money to replace the chromebooks with new ones.

 

My 2p anyway!

[Rob_D]

@PotNoodleTech So do you get the chromebooks back off the students when they leave?

[dmj]

I've always been uneasy about parental contribution myself, we're not a private school - we don't charge parents 5 grand a year for the priveledge, we dont make pupils pay for books or pencils or paper or anything else that we "force" the pupils to need so why would you force them to use 1:1 devices and then charge them?

 

No Uniforms, School shoes, calculators.

Many schools literally send students home if they don't have these. We just added Chromebooks to the list. Our SLT/Governors didn't think £100 per year extra didn't seem out of the ordinary

But with 25% FSM you are a different demographic.

[PotNoodleTech]

@PotNoodleTech So do you get the chromebooks back off the students when they leave?

 

Yes - when they leave year 11 or year 13 they hand the chromebooks back in in their last week. Me and my techie keep tight spreadsheets of who's got what. SLT are very involved and understand the financial value of each Chromebook, and help out with adding a bit more gravitas during the chasing up.

 

Stragglers have Chromebook disabled, parents text/emailed and then eventually phone call from SLT.

 

In extreme cases (only a handful over the years) SLT or I visit the doorstep.

[Zammo]

That is literally a parent contribution scheme but hey ho, if you call it different fair enough

 

Steve

 

With parental contributions the ownership stays with the school, until the asset is released at the end

[dmj]

With parental contributions the ownership stays with the school, until the asset is released at the end

 

I suppose our scheme was part parental contribution then, many of the parents paid in full - so would qualify as BYOD. I'm afraid I don't recall the statistics of how many decided to pay in full and how many were paying monthly.

[FN-GM]

BYOD is standard here. Schools usually publish a list of approved documents devices. The parent can find their own or purchase via suggested suppliers.

[TechMonkey]

We are about to go BYOD this September, we are Independent though. We will have no control of the devices, it will be a complete BYOD system, except what we can enforce through onboarding or over the network (in line filter for example)

We have published a minimum spec and beyond that it is up to the parent to decide what they get. We have provided a portal to purchase devices from, but this a transaction between the portal company and the parent, the school is not involved at all. Some schemes will ultimately hold the school responsible for no payment or want to run the money through the school accounts, but our finance director didn't want that at all.

Looks like we may have a mix of Windows, OSX and iOS, in part because we have been lenient with the specification and allowed external graphics pads instead of touchscreen IF they have already bought a device and want to use it.

 

I do seem to remember someone who was a long time regular running a massive BYOD scheme at their school and had a league table of the most basic device that met their criteria. Ended up being some Chinese knock of Android tablet. I think they went of to the real world so may not be around anymore, or around less.

 

It is going to be fun.

[supportman]

Whole school isn't great after seeing many implementations over the years. Most fail or die away after time and money spent and random SLT member who championed it moves on.

 

It sometimes works but is a huge effort for very little gain. Maybe less photocopying costs?

 

Personally our school went 6th form and boarders only. Works well for those who want them and lets the school teach how they want.

 

We use a simple radius and BYOD network on a separate IP range with smoothwall.