Laptop for starting secondary school?

[Bemyclementine]

Dc1 starts in sept. All homework is online.

We dont have a laptop or pc in the house.

No budget at all so will need something cheap but equally don't want to waste money on something crap!

What are others doing? Is there a budget laptop that will do the job?

Don't rush out and buy something, wait until DC starts school & find out what exactly is needed.

The school may supply a chromebook or similar or have a scheme for low cost devices.

If you're worried DC will get detentions for missing HW, most schools don't give detentions to Y7 for a few weeks as they know they need settling in time.

Speak to a teacher on the gate when you collect on the first day.

You realise this is secondary school right?
unlikely the child will be collected at the gate and unlikely you know anything about school rules.

ours certainly expected to be up & running on day 1.

I think this is the right approach. A secondary school student with no access to a laptop is disadvantaged for sure.

Refurbished models are a good shout, or post on your local fb page to see anyone is getting rid of an old model.

Not necessarily. DD has one. The only time she uses it is when the slides don’t display properly on her tablet/phone, which is once in a blue moon.

Education should be free for everyone. If the school wants to do homework online then they need to provide the laptop.
my local library has loads of PCs and quite often will see students using them.

That's a really rude response.

I've worked in 7 different secondary schools so I'm not a total idiot, thanks.

There won't be any teacher to speak to on the gate, in any case DzC will be getting a bus.

Thanks for the suggestions, I am hoping one of the cheaper models will do him for a few years