In terms of 1:1 devices, why is this not the norm in the UK?

[FN-GM]

23 hours ago, E_G_R2 said:

Be interesting if you could give a example of how it works for your nephew and their school?

The device is owned by the student (or their family), they are given a list of devices to choose from. It is enrolled on the state governments Microsoft tenant and managed via Intune. There isn't really much software on it as most of it is web based these days. The device is is filtered off site like it would be at school. If the students breaks or looses the device it's up to the family to fund a repair or replacement, just like any other piece of equipment.

 

They do have computers in the schools for specialist work, for example a desktop connected to a 3D printer. 

[Norphy]

 

3 minutes ago, FN-GM said:

The device is owned by the student (or their family), they are given a list of devices to choose from. It is enrolled on the state governments Microsoft tenant and managed via Intune.

 

This where I feel it gets a bit messy. I have no objection to buying my kid equipment he needs for his schoolwork, but if I'm buying and I'm owning it, why is it being managed by a government institution and why is the goverment institution telling us what can and can't be done with it when it's not on government property? 

 

If the device was government property I wouldn't have an issue with that but as soon as personal money comes into play, it gets a lot murkier.

[E_G_R2]

4 minutes ago, FN-GM said:

The device is owned by the student (or their family), they are given a list of devices to choose from. It is enrolled on the state governments Microsoft tenant and managed via Intune. There isn't really much software on it as most of it is web based these days. The device is is filtered off site like it would be at school. If the students breaks or looses the device it's up to the family to fund a repair or replacement, just like any other piece of equipment.

 

They do have computers in the schools for specialist work, for example a desktop connected to a 3D printer. 

Interesting re replacement/repairs as looking at all of the posts that seems to be one of the biggest bugbears.

 

Offsite filtering is mandatoery? 

 

Guess state government read MAT for Intune.

 

Question - is this directed from state level with state level funding and support?  If so over here the lack of state (LEA) control would probably be the main reason for slow uptake as each school or MAT is having to re invent the wheel so to speak.

[Rob_D]

17 minutes ago, FN-GM said:

The device is owned by the student (or their family), they are given a list of devices to choose from.

Do they have to buy through the govt or an "approved vendor"?

 

I've seen few LTT videos framed as "Linus/employee's kid is starting school and the school says they need a Chromebook" so they rock up at %local tech superstore% and browse. (I assume that's really how it works in Canada)

Edited August 14 by Rob_D

[FN-GM]

Just now, E_G_R2 said:

Interesting re replacement/repairs as looking at all of the posts that seems to be one of the biggest bugbears.

 

Offsite filtering is mandatoery? 

 

Guess state government read MAT for Intune.

 

Question - is this directed from state level with state level funding and support?  If so over here the lack of state (LEA) control would probably be the main reason for slow uptake as each school or MAT is having to re invent the wheel so to speak.

I will check about the filtering, but I believe so yes. Australia is more strict than the UK with this type of thing. Early adopter of the social media ban etc.

The state government manage the IT for the whole of South Australia. The population of the state isn't large, 1.9 million people and 130,000 students in high school. However, this is just 1 one state, there are 5 other states and 2 territories - I am not sure how they operate.

 

In general Australian education is  different. There are vocational subjects in high schools such as construction, game design, engineering etc. School uniform isn't a big thing either, T-Shirt / hoddie and shorts (even for the winter!) and trainers. Only posh private schools have shirts and ties.

[psydii]

"why is the government institution telling us what can and can't be done with it when it's not on government property" see also building regulations, vehicle safety, guns etc etc.

 

Particularly with a computers in schools there are significant security and safeguarding implications in the institution not having full management authority over devices.   

 

The correct answer of course depends on your perspective. If I was in charge, I would insist that devices were supplied and managed by the institution. How they are actually funded and who actually owns each device, I'm flexible, and really is a trade-off between the financials and the politics. 

 

But being able to swap out a device like for like, and the support for everything up to that point is only really managable if diversity of devices in the estate is as low as reasonably possible. Without at least 99.95% reliability in the classroom, you have a programme that is causing problems not solving them.

 

99.95% reliability allows (roughly) one student in a class to have 1 lesson-blocking issue every 100 lessons, which sounds fine until you scale it.   In a school of about 100 classrooms with 5 period days that's 5 times a day for a tech to be required to support/swap a student laptop, on top of the existing IWB/Staff Device/Printers/Phones etc etc load that already exists. Certainly manageable for some schools with a solid IT team, less so for schools or districts where there might only <1 technician per site. 

[FN-GM]

20 minutes ago, psydii said:

for a tech to be required to support/swap a student laptop

Here, this isn't the job of the school. If there is something wrong with the laptop, it's up to the student / family to repair or replace. A new approach requires a different mindset.

Edited August 14 by FN-GM

[E_G_R2]

2 minutes ago, FN-GM said:

Here, this isn't the job of the school. If there is something wrong with the laptop, it's up to the student / family to repair or replace. A new approach requires a different mindset.

So does the school/local gov provide a temporary replacement or is it a case of tough you will be without until its fixed? The perceived need to have 'spares' is another blocking point IMO.

[FN-GM]

8 minutes ago, E_G_R2 said:

So does the school/local gov provide a temporary replacement or is it a case of tough you will be without until its fixed? The perceived need to have 'spares' is another blocking point IMO.

I believe there is a loan pool available at the library. But considering the total number of devices funded by the school will be less than the current UK model, I can't see how this would be a roadblock.

[E_G_R2]

2 minutes ago, FN-GM said:

I believe there is a loan pool available at the library. But considering the total number of devices funded by the school will be less than the current UK model, I can't see how this would be a roadblock.

Some people could see it as an additional burden to keep a stock of devices and have to loan them out and then get them back when a device goes for repair.  If there is something concrete in place then I'm sure this mindset would change.

[mthomas08]

You guys are bringing up some bad memories and reminding me why we shut down the scheme.

 

It can work but.. the can of worms are just not worth it for us. I'm also glad our daughter's school doesn't have such a scheme.

[Tefters]

We are a 1:1 school, iPads.

 

Yes, it is a sh*t show; filtering and safeguarding companies simply cannot meet all their promises when it comes to iPads.

 

Students' iPads are filled with selfies, memes and stupid imagery. Breakages are through the roof; parents don't/won't pay for repairs. A good 20% to 30% of iPads being used by students have broken screens with shards of glass everywhere.

 

Year 7's now also have them, 11 years old, i didn't let my daughters have mobile phones until they were 12, going on 13, but the school will give them iPads.

 

I look at reports daily, and the majority of the surfing is junk, and students are using them at ungodly hours. All this was pushed as an idea from the school...

Students don't know how to use a computer anymore: word processing documents, presentation skills, spreadsheet data and graphs.... Skills that are all gone.

 

The funniest part to me was why they wanted to push them onto the Year 7 cohort earlier this year, answer, to help them with reading and maths. The results for these areas, compared to 10 years ago, are a joke, and the real reason is the devices that they think are the solution, on top of lazy/lack of parenting, but they don't want to upset the parents by actually telling them how it is, so instead £80k per year on iPads, cases, chargers and licensing is spent. I have to just turn my brain off and go into Zombie mode when it comes to these devices; otherwise, you drive yourself mad just thinking about "why" and "what are we actually achieving other than ticking a box" because it sure as hell isn't helping the kids of today.

Edited August 14 by Tefters

[Roberto]

4 hours ago, E_G_R2 said:

Question - is this directed from state level with state level funding and support?  If so over here the lack of state (LEA) control would probably be the main reason for slow uptake as each school or MAT is having to re invent the wheel so to speak.

 

This is what I was digging into with my earlier comments about needing to be driven at a very high level and to concern more than just the end-user devices themselves. Identifying a list of suitable devices is, relatively speaking, the easiest part of the equation. You'd need to rethink how educational software is developed and delivered, how student devices are managed, how devices for people on low incomes could be funded, etc. This could very much be done but cannot be properly solved by one school, or even one MAT now matter how large, acting alone.

[mthomas08]

3 minutes ago, Tefters said:

 

filtering and safeguarding companies simply cannot meet all their promises when it comes to iPads.

 

 

Wow.. you got it bad... and it really does bring some bad memories...

 

Silly question but what MDM and filtering do you use?

We have iPads but only about 30 of them. I've got Mosyle and the profile setup as 1:1 which allows Lightspeed filtering and Smoothwall Monitor. Most of the default apps are disabled. They can't install apps etc.

 

Took me a few times to build the system to the way I have it now and touch wood.. it should work a treat. 

[Tefters]

1 hour ago, mthomas08 said:

 

Wow.. you got it bad... and it really does bring some bad memories...

 

Silly question but what MDM and filtering do you use?

We have iPads but only about 30 of them. I've got Mosyle and the profile setup as 1:1 which allows Lightspeed filtering and Smoothwall Monitor. Most of the default apps are disabled. They can't install apps etc.

 

Took me a few times to build the system to the way I have it now and touch wood.. it should work a treat. 

 

We are also a secondary school / sixth form so i speak from that perspective.

 

Lightsh*t at present, non-stop issues over 5 years, latest one being URL shorteners being incorrectly categorized and also allowing them to blocked sites because its filtering on the shortener URL not the redirected one. They cant replicate the issue though and apparently it's only our tenant (I call BS on that).

 

Then you have Smoothwall, which i am trialling for a second time after 2 years of the initial trial, and I am also having problems, which I am awaiting feedback on...

 

🤪

[itskdog]

When I was in Year 9 our school set up a 1:1 system. Students voted to use ASUS Transformers (Android 4.x tablets that docked to a keyboard and trackpad with USB ports). Techy students encouraged others to vote for them over iPads as we still needed Adobe Flash for MyMaths, while still allowing apps & games to be installed from the Play Store.

 

This was before Chromebooks launched and Windows 7 was the latest OS version, and Gmail was separate from the built-in email app.

 

They turned out to be really fragile and most broke within a week, so teachers never really used them much in lessons as so many students just left them broken in the box at home, and were basically forgotten about within 18 months.

[Rob_D]

On 15/08/2026 at 14:23, itskdog said:

They [ASUS Transofrmers] turned out to be really fragile and most broke within a week

I had the TF101 transformer back in the day, and it was so rugged and chunky you could do light DIY with it. The main drawback was it was heavy and chunky enough you'd probably take someone out if you threw it at them.

[Garacesh]

On 14/08/2026 at 08:55, Norphy said:

 

 

This where I feel it gets a bit messy. I have no objection to buying my kid equipment he needs for his schoolwork, but if I'm buying and I'm owning it, why is it being managed by a government institution and why is the goverment institution telling us what can and can't be done with it when it's not on government property? 

 

If the device was government property I wouldn't have an issue with that but as soon as personal money comes into play, it gets a lot murkier.

Not that I have a dog in this fight any more since I went corporate, but I kinda can't help but agree with this.

Maybe it's because I'm a power user and I understand how to lock down a device, but if my hypothetical (hopefully!) kids' school wants them to have a 1:1 device, and they want me as a parent to have no say in that device, then that device ought to belong to the school. 

 

Sure, offer that I can buy it out at the end of its lifecycle if I want it. I'm good with that, and it's a nice way to lessen the amount of e-waste floating around out there. And sure, put me on the hook for damages the kid might cause, I consider that reasonable, because it's an expensive device and I appreciate a) the school doesn't have infinite money and b) little Johnny needs to learn how to look after stuff. But to say it's my device, I'm paying it off, but it's not my device because the school/government have full control of it via MDM? That's too much of a grey-area middleground to sit right with me. 

 

Maybe the idea is most parents aren't power users, I appreciate I'm coming from a position probably the majority of parents wouldn't be. But as a hypothetical parent, do I also not have a say over my kid's digital activity? What if I wanted to put software on to brick it after 10pm*? Or block certain sites myself that the school's filtering doesn't**? 

 

I've always been on board with the 1:1 devices idea, but 1:1 devices with offsite filtering that the kids take home has always been iffy with me. 

 

* Yes, turn off the router, but there's still wifi hotspotting etc

** Again possible at router level but DNS over HTTPS exists. 

[hardtailstar]

I used to work for a primary school and we had a 1:1 scheme.

 

Pros 

Students could use them in class and the single IT suite was turned into flexible classroom which then would test equipment to eventually go into other classrooms

 

Cons

Parents didn't pay for the devices, lots cancelled the direct debit payment.

Parents would not pay for damages

Multiple cases of older siblings/parents using the laptops for 18 plus content

 

After about two years of issues, the school refunded the parents that had paid any payments and the laptops were kept at school in charging trolleys.

 

This worked much better and had less damages. 

 

[Rob_D]

10 hours ago, hardtailstar said:

After about two years of issues, the school refunded the parents that had paid any payments and the laptops were kept at school in charging trolleys.

 

This worked much better and had less damages. 

Is it still 1:1 devices in so far as each student has an assigned device that they always use, or are they just sets of shared devices now?

[E_G_R2]

Reading all of the reply's to the OP my take on it is that in the UK a scheme like this hasn't been widely taken up is because each school or MAT is attempting to do it whilst in the OP's example it is the state (LEA/GOV) that is driving it.

[NorthernNoel]

I've done a lot of research into 1:1 and after starting as a cynic I actually believe the benefits outweigh the negatives. However, it needs to be done correctly. I'm not just talking about how you manage devices, repairs, filtering etc but it needs a complete culture shift in how staff teach and they need to embed the devices within their curriculum. This is where it primarily falls over. I have seen a school run it well but I've also seen many do it badly.

If you're bold and invest in infrastructure, support staff (IT and finance) and training from the outset you solve so many problems. Kids all have the same device for homework, BYOD can finally get in the bin, costs reduce as you're taking 'donations' from parents to run it. Ironically the school that did it well had better staff retention as they didn't want to go elsewhere to a school without them.

 

But, what happens in the most of cases is that teaching staff will complain of change and the initial time investment in teaching a different way. The project will then be scaled back and it falls apart. If you do it, you've got to commit but most SLTs don't want that initial unpopularity.

[supportman]

We do this for our 6th form and it works great. Not sure there is a need for lower years though.

[Garacesh]

On 26/08/2026 at 09:52, NorthernNoel said:

it needs a complete culture shift in how staff teach and they need to embed the devices within their curriculum

This has always been one of the biggest cruxes.

 

I've seen interactive whiteboards thrown in front of teachers who made zero modifications to their classroom plans to account for it, so they were glorified projection surfaces. The most improvement they brought was maybe a nicer pair of speakers if they were using digital media. I've seen visualisers covered in dust in science classrooms whilst all the kids huddle around an experiment at the front and fight to look over each other's shoulders, when they could be scaling the visual up and projecting it on the board. I've seen trolleys laptops wheeled out and used for nought but flash games on the internet and maybe the occasional essay, when they could be so much more (but ok, fair enough, that's also the kids being kids, so I'm willing to cut some slack on that one). I've seen VR headsets get used a handful of times until the novelty wears off and never get touched again.

 

Maybe some kids will 'automatically' write better work with the aid of a keyboard instead of a pen if there are dexterity issues in play, but outside of that, you can't just throw technology at classrooms and expect an improvement. Teachers need to implement it into their teaching and play to their strengths instead of using 20 year old schemes of work (looking at you, Boardworks!), and for some folk that's also going to require additional training. And the kids need to be taught how to properly utilise it, how to research properly, and when it is and isn't appropriate. 

 

Too many times I've seen "Oh if we get this, we can X Y Z" and it's like.. okay.. but are you gonna actually take the effort to X Y Z? Because it doesn't 'just happen', you have to actually set it up. 

 

But, in the interest of fairness, and to not sound like I'm just having a moan, I will say I've also seen some fantastic teachers that have taken the time to properly implement tech into their classroom, and the benefits are blatantly obvious when they do. But it is a lot of work, and it does require a re-think and a bit of a break from the norm. And if we're being fair, maybe if teachers weren't having to work 50+ hour weeks they'd have time to actually write new stuff...

 

[NorthernNoel]

2 minutes ago, Garacesh said:

But, in the interest of fairness, and to not sound like I'm just having a moan, I will say I've also seen some fantastic teachers that have taken the time to properly implement tech into their classroom, and the benefits are blatantly obvious when they do. But it is a lot of work, and it does require a re-think and a bit of a break from the norm. And if we're being fair, maybe if teachers weren't having to work 50+ hour weeks they'd have time to actually write new stuff...

 

I agree. It's shortsighted that we keep regurgitating older teaching methods because 'that's what we've always done so it must be right'. I had a discussion recently that even now our IT curriculum is out of date as we're teaching methods that we are comfortable with, not the students. Will children in the workplace use a PC as much or will they use a tablet? After all a lot don't have a PC at home like we did. They've grown up around a touch interface. Will they even be using IT in the same way in the dawn of AI?

Just on the 50+ hours, it's an issue but going back to the school that did 1:1 well. Their curriculum was created for them to fit with the tech. It gave them options for auto marking using the tech. Overall their initial setup was hard but once they'd got past that barrier staff had more time. The thing that impressed me the most was that it didn't become an IT lesson every time they used computers. It felt like it was just a part of the lesson and they could switch easily between using their devices and not. I guess my point is that yes there is an initial pain but once you get over that the job is easier. Trouble is that no-one wants to go through that initial stage so we just do as we've always done.