We're now using Shared iPad mode for all student ages.

[Planehazza]

Wish us luck, send flower to my funeral... 

 

We've turned a blind eye to iPad student internet tracking for too long. Yes, they've been filtered and tied to 1:1 pseudo accounts, but after I reminded them we were averaging 1.5 alerts per day across the trust and we had no way of tracking who was using any of the 600 iPads, our hand was forced and I've implemented Shared iPad mode, federated against Google. Some staff are very unhappy that it's too hard, but we just have to use Safeguarding to quieten them again.

 

Anyone else been in this position? Teachers spouting safeguarding left, right, and centre, but heaven forbid they have to teach kids IT skills in an IT lesson, using a very simple user guide I created for them...

[mthomas08]

Our iPads for students are 1:1 tied and have Lighspeed filtering and Smoothwal monitoring for safeguarding. They tie to the individual.

 

I tried to get Lighstpeed working with the Shared setup but later found it wasn't supposed to work.

[Planehazza]

Y

On 03/09/2026 at 13:05, mthomas08 said:

Our iPads for students are 1:1 tied and have Lighspeed filtering and Smoothwal monitoring for safeguarding. They tie to the individual.

 

I tried to get Lighstpeed working with the Shared setup but later found it wasn't supposed to work.

No can do here. ~500 ipads in the trust, but 1500+ primary students. Simply no money to do 1:1

 

Shared iPad has been a nightmare. Staff were bumped up to instructors, so ASM enforce 8 digit alphanumeric. It has broken all logins and there's no way to clear users off the device that I can tell. I really want to tell the schools to abandon iPads as they start to fall off compliance. Utter nightmare.

[Olliedawg]

Shared iPads are a nightmare, much better suited as a 1:1 device

[Planehazza]

10 minutes ago, Olliedawg said:

Shared iPads are a nightmare, much better suited as a 1:1 device

Agreed. I knew it was going to be bad going into it, but KCSIE regs and lack of funding for 1:1 has forced my hand. We (I) have had sooo much grief from certain members of SLT/exec who are heavily involved in school safeguarding... it's infuriating. Boils down to them not wanting to teach kids how to sign in to devices. Funny that...

 

The biggest issues is signin steps - if it fails, it's very confusing. Also, majority of our fleet is 32GB iPads ~6 years old meaning profiles get ~2GB which is filling quick with app data and photos. Doesn't matter how much I tell staff to back things up to Google. I'm going to test dropping the max user count from 6 (already dropped from default 10) to 2 and see if it gives them more space. Failing that, staff iPads will be reverted back to 1:1 but that's a lot of building and testing I simply do not have time for now. 500 tickets since Sep 1st across 10 sites. I'm singlehandedly doing SCCM upgrades, Intune implementations, Entra ID > Google SSO, Smoothwall implementation and deployment on top of doing direct support for 6 primaries. It's utterly bonkers, and I'm reaching burnout fast. Mistakes are being made. 

[Planehazza]

On 03/09/2026 at 13:05, mthomas08 said:

Our iPads for students are 1:1 tied and have Lighspeed filtering and Smoothwal monitoring for safeguarding. They tie to the individual.

 

I tried to get Lighstpeed working with the Shared setup but later found it wasn't supposed to work.

Going from Lightspeed to Smoothwall, there are some things I miss from Lightspeed. Their MDM bulk actions are much better than Intune, but Intune seems to work with devices much more quickly and more reliably.

[DavR]

I feel for you @Planehazza, Shared iPad just isn't fit for purpose, for younger kids at least, and especially on older devices.

 

iPads were never designed for multi-user environments, they're fundamentally single user devices. There are ways and means to fudge that, but none are great.

 

But that's not what those above want to hear, is it. They like the iPad functionality, so you must find a way of making it work accountably for safeguarding and Cyber Essentials. Argh.

[tom_newton]

@Planehazza if theres anything you miss that's not MDMwise i'd be keen to hear it, we might be able to help

[Planehazza]

17 hours ago, DavR said:

I feel for you @Planehazza, Shared iPad just isn't fit for purpose, for younger kids at least, and especially on older devices.

 

iPads were never designed for multi-user environments, they're fundamentally single user devices. There are ways and means to fudge that, but none are great.

 

But that's not what those above want to hear, is it. They like the iPad functionality, so you must find a way of making it work accountably for safeguarding and Cyber Essentials. Argh.

Yep. I've been at my org for 4 years and iPads have always been solely on me, in fact that's been the same for the last employer too, so iPad/MDM have been one of my remits for 11 years. Schools rush off any buy shiny cool thing without any thought on how to implement their own safeguarding, then kick off with IT when we're "the bad guys". It's doing my head in, but let's leave that there... I've looked at several methods but any that require any work from teachers is met with complaints and refusal. Who'd have thought it the job of a teacher, teaching ICT curriculum, to teach pupils how to type and enter a username and password? Heaven forbid they use word or Google Docs to save a list of passwords/PINs and dish them out in their lessons... 😅 

 

Prior to shared iPad we had no idea which students were using which devices so any Lightspeed alerts were just against '<school>iPad73'. No idea who until the teachers went up to find which kids were giggling the most. Not good enough especially with the recent KCSIE focus etc, so our (my) hands were forced and shared iPad mode was built, tested, communicated (MANY TIMES), and deployed. 

 

Our ipads are a mix. We've just bought 90 new, but the rest are 5 years old on average, all 32GB. How else would you do it in a not too affluent area where school budgets are tighter than a duck's backside? 1:1 is never going to happen in my schools unfortunately

[Planehazza]

17 hours ago, tom_newton said:

@Planehazza if theres anything you miss that's not MDMwise i'd be keen to hear it, we might be able to help

 

Thanks Tom. It's more MDM so Lightspeed vs Intune. I think I have a meeting with a Smoothwall Tom about filtering policies next month so if it's you, see you soon!