Can our child's school force us to buy a device through their scheme?

neilmcl

letsbehonest said:

I can't see how a school can make you buy from them the same product you can buy elsewhere cheaper. No one can make you buy what you don't want.

So Schools can't "make" you to buy their branded uniform then?

pbartlett

No they can't. They can do things like expel the pupil but they certainly can't frog-march you down to the outfitters ...

CoastingHatbox

I'm sure there was an article published somewhere about Google doing naughty things in Ireland to encourage schools to adopt Chromebooks. Of course, I can't find it now.

I think the issue here is that the School has to obtain a 'Chrome Education Upgrade' license for each Chromebook in order to use additional administrative features of 'Google Workspace for Education' in relation to the Chromebook.

I believe you can obtain the license separate to the device but that probably creates extra administrative burden for the School and their IT supplier as procurement is usually over complicated and the device will have to be enrolled.

Personally, I don't believe in schools mandating what device pupils are allowed to use. There's absolutely no need to do this. I can understand why they may want to do it, but forcing students to share their data with a large entity which essentially makes it money from the personal data it collects is not something an education establishment should be doing.