TheHyperTechie

Following - we don't have any network gear, but about 20 Chrome OS desktops with monitors that are only a couple of years old. Recent refresh from our new Trust means we have moved to a Microsoft setup.

RM SafetyNet Go here, formally buzz. Works well for us!

What @synaesthesiasaid... records have to be accurate from what the teacher/staff member observed. I don't believe the content needs to be proven true. e.g. "Pupil A reported that..." rather than "Pupil A definitely did..."

Of course not, Isn't that what we are here for? I am exclusively talking about the CtC scheme here. But would you not be willing to sit down with them and explain that we were not able to upgrade x,y,z due to budget restraints, and possibly get funding for a brand new network? edit - This is just my own opinion of how it could be better allocated to schools that need it. I don't think there truly is a "right" way to be honest. I do agree with a lot these points people have made!

Not sure I agree. They are "supposed" to scrutinize budgets anyway. As for the relationships between schools and Ofsted, surely this would be an improvement compared to what we have now. I know if it was me, I would see that they are trying to be more proactive in terms of granting schools that actually need it, access to the CtC scheme?

This is where (following the Ofsted idea) it would hold SLT, and NMs accountable for the infrastructure in their school. Ofsted: "Oh I can see from your budgets that you purchased 20 iPads in 2024 for £5000... Can you please explain to me why you decided to purchase these rather than upgrade your 10 year old Wi-Fi system? For some, their may be a very valid reason e.g. their old iPads were EOL and teaching and learning apps were no longer supported, or we didn't have the budget to do both. I believe this is a good example of where the CtC scheme would come in handy.

I am sure I saw someone mention something along these lines the other day. But in my opinion (which is very irrelevant in this grand scheme of this lol) Ofsted should play a part in these grants, if the inspectors visited each school and did a swift audit of the infrastructure in them (while carrying out the main inspection of course) (e.g. Wi-Fi and Switches, Broadband) they would be able to feed back to the DfE accordingly and explain that this school would benefit from the upgrades for x,y,z reasons.

Jamf is very good. Used to manage a few thousand iPads in a central Trust tenant, easy to use, and commands were picked up quicker than any other MDM I have used before.

+1 Mosyle

Interesting. Out of interest, what model Acers did you have issues with? the "Plus" models appear to be very sturdy. Haven't had a complaint, and they have been in use for nearly a year.

Obviously totally dependent on your budget, but I would go for something like the Acer Chrombeook Plus 515. We have a few here, and they are great. I believe they also get updates until 2032. So as long as they stay in good condition, you wont need to worry about upgrading them for nearly a decade.

I have one account with multiple orgs setup within it. My OCD would be on fire if I had to sign into multiple tenants haha!

Yeah no MFA support currently. As for the lack of tools outside the curriculum, I understand what you mean, but this specific AI tool is designed for educators. I would argue that AI should only be used for these purposes within education; otherwise, what other tasks are you using it for during school time, on a school-issued device, with a school-issued email address?

I used to use Altaro a while ago, before Veeam. I was able to back up 2 VMs for free, might be worth looking at? obviously dependent on the size of your school though, it used to suffice for a small school with just a single DC and a fileserver.

Yeah it is handy, but also appears to be the exact opposite of what their guide says haha!

This would be expected, you have targeted the admin permissions to the OU that contains the teacher. You can remove them from that OU at any point, and they will lose admin access. EDIT - I understand what you mean, as your essentially saying... If I have logged in with a standard account (that has standard permissions) to set the device up, subsequently, any account that signs in after should be a "standard user". I am unsure why adjusting the permissions after works, GCPW can be a "headache" sometimes!

Yes, you would just need to move the particular user into the Administrators OU (assuming you have one) and then target the permissions to that OU. Any user in it will then gain local admin rights to the machine. As you mentioned, you do not want to log in first with your account as this will grant any user who logs in after you local administrator access. Worth noting with GCPW and permission settings, I found that signing in, then out, then back in would force the user to have local admin permissions.

Make sure you logout and reboot the device, this is *usually* enough to force a sync.

Yeah, we looked into quite a few - but TeachmateAI seemed to be the best (for educational tasks.... which in a school is what it should be used for anyway). I manage the licenses from our portal, and I also have a analytics page to view which particular tools are trending amongst the staff. The big tick for us though, was that their servers are UK hosted.

Probably a silly reply, but have you checked under endpoint analytics to make sure the computer(s) shows they are actually eligible to upgrade (e.g TPM enabled).

Can you opt in to use their Europe based Azure servers for storing information now? We introduced an AI policy a while ago, ChatGPT wouldn't pass the DPIA at the time due to data storing regions. We went with TeachmateAI which is wayyyy more education based. Trialed it with about 30 staff members and they really liked it.

We manage under 100 endpoints within Action1 so still fit within the "free" tier. I am unsure on pricing over 200 devices, although I am certain I saw somewhere on a forum a while ago, it was roughly ~£2 per device per year. Definitely double check though, as I could be completely wrong.

Hi, sorry should have mentioned in my first reply. Yes, it is a full RMM tool, with the ability to remote desktop onto devices, deploy applications from their library (or create your own custom packages) deploy updates, and also run scripts on your endpoints remotely.

I would look into Action1, it's free for the first 200 endpoints - I also (think) they do education discount on further licenses.

Just merged with a MAT that uses/wants to use Every for everything, assets, tickets, HR, training. I have been using it over the last couple of months... the headaches! I must admit, I haven't used any similar software before so therefore, can't compare it to anything else - I don't overly like using it though, not a fan of the UI and it can be an extreme mission to navigate to particular area and remember for the next time. Normally I would just reach out to support so they could tell me. We don't currently have it syncing with anything, but we are moving our schools to Bromcom - so this will probably be a project for the near future.