To say schools should not charge for this?

[HelpIcantfindaname]

Previously DDs (14) school have loaned all students laptops in years 10, 11 & 6th form because they are essential for lessons in school. They have been free...up to now.

Now parents have to pay what they call a 'low affordable' monthly rental fee.

This low affordable fee is £25 a month!!!! With £100 deposit!

How many families will be able to afford that? We can't. I've had to take ill health retirement & money is tight.

If this is an essential piece of equipment surely the school should provide them, like they have till now.

It's like telling the rest of the year groups they need to pay for their books . They are not allowed to take their own laptops in because of safety settings.

I know schools are struggling but so are families!

AIBU in thinking this is not going to be manageable for many families?

I don't understand the need for children to be continuously glued to a laptop.

When I was in school, we used books and had discussions. If we needed a computer for research, we went to the school library and used the pcs in there.

A family PC should be good enough.

I would complain to the governors, pointing out that the school is breaching Sections 451 and 454 of the Education Act 1996, as explained in this guidance on charging for school activities.

We challenged our academy school on something similar in which we all had to pay for a tablet supplied by a company contracted by the school who came to tell us all how much better our kids’ lives would be for it. The school continued to plug the scheme but was forced to publicise that this was a purely voluntary request and the costs could be met by the school if the parents couldn’t or wouldn’t pay.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/706830/Charging_for_school_activities.pdf

Will add to others saying the Chromebooks scheme(s) is much cheaper and you get to keep the laptop at the end! The least you can pay per month is £9 something and that’s for 36 months. Or you can pay outright or pay a higher monthly amount for shorter time.

I can afford this but I still think it is wrong!

A scheme like this should be optional and students can provide their own. There should also be a way of accessing this if you are on low income (I’m hoping FSM+ won’t have to pay but that is a way some schools are socially selective by the back door).

Deposit - yes. Charging monthly for a compulsory item with no option to source their own - not on at all.

It's ridiculous that they can't take in their own so that you could buy a reasonably priced one. The "safety settings" excuse sounds like rubbish to me - all the secondary school kids I know are allowed to take their own laptop to school. I would challenge this OP.

Honestly I think this new 'need' for them to have iPads or laptops is just lazy teaching.

From what I gather a lot of teachers don't even bother to answer questions anymore because "that's what your iPad is for". It's pathetic and I think far more of a hindrance than a help. How can they be expected to retain and learn information when they've constantly got Google at their fingertips?

Id be refusing to pay that.
Ds school we pay £10 per month over 3 years for his school iPad it’s then ours to keep.

I didn't realise laptops were essential in so many schools. Thankfully DS school doesn't require a laptop.

The monthly fee paid, I'm assuming covers part of the laptop payment and goes toward software payments (school software plus anti virus etc).

Personally, I don't like the idea of using a laptop all the time (or any screen).

Op what happens when parents can't keep up with payments? Has the school said anything?

My daughter's school tried this , they just used Google classroom so she used her own laptop. They wanted everyone to pay a premium for use of something that was much cheaper to buy anyway. Most parents refused.

Have they said what would happen if parents just refuse to pay? They can hardly decide not to teach the ones without school laptops.

At my daughter's school they gave laptops to the children to use anyway. Then tried to flog them at the end of the year. From the volume of school ping messages I'd say that they sold none or few , so I don't think they'll be doing that again.

Couple of things:

£300 per laptop will be heavily subsidised already by the school

Bring your own device requires lots of infrastructure setup to achieve, due to network access. It’s not as simple as joining the Wi-Fi. Many expenses and considerations involved, licensing, access, load. Schools support a huge number of devices on very little funds compared to corporate, with a high number of users and network load (everyone logging in) at certain times each day with timetabled lessons.

I wouldn’t be too happy either, however its not an cheap task to achieve for anyone.

No request from our school here. They use school Chromebooks when needed. It would be a nightmare for their very limited IT dept to support multiple devices/firewalls/virus protection on personal devices too.

I can see why schools can't necessarily afford to give children laptops to use (especially if many get damaged or 'lost') but that is a lot of money for something that the children have to have. If it's a device they've chosen and locked down as it were then it's also ridiculous for people who can afford it. If they're utilising laptops extensively then there are settings they can lock down in the network which means everyone connected via the WiFi will be subject to them- sure some might have saved material on one from home but I'm not sure the answer is to charge everyone over the odds for what is probably a pretty shit laptop they got on a bulk deal.
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£300 per laptop will be heavily subsidised already by the school

Lol behave.

Schools should be given funding for laptops if they're an essential item. I wouldn't blame the school for having to charge (unless they're an academy on the grift), I blame the government. They keep on about 'closing the gap' which we know often includes those from low income households, what happens if their parents literally can't afford to pay this? Does their child not get to access lessons?

Maybe if schools didn’t expect parents to spend £100s on uniforms - most of which is poorly made, poorly fitting and impractical for the actual school day - then some could afford laptops.
Imagine the job interviews….
”I see you only got a couple of GCSEs at low grades…”
”Well unfortunately my parents couldn’t afford a laptop so I couldn’t access lessons properly and I regularly got ill from overheating by wearing a tie and blazer in a heatwave. However I always had the correct colour socks.”
Okay….that’s totally sarcastic but it’s also a valid point.

I don't know how schools get away with this tbh.

My child started a setting where they were given iPads. We were asked to sign forms taking responsibility and agreeing to pay for any damage/repairs. I just refused.

@OwlRightThen a lot “get away with it” because they are Academy Schools which are government funded private schools and can have all sorts of silly rules and regulations and do what they want and go by the theory that “you choose to send your child there”. Unfortunately in many places a LA funded school doesn’t exist anymore. So you don’t have that choice.

But it’s not £300, it’s £300 per year. I would expect a laptop to last a lot longer than 1 year.

This!

The OP will possibly find that the school also has a scheme in place (which will obviously not be widely publicised in order not to make struggling families feel worse) whereby under certain circumstances, devices are provided to the student.

(ours are allowed to BYOD but we do have a scheme in place for those who can't)

They are a tad 'law unto themselves' but I also think sometimes they just aren't challenged. Same with uniforms that are stupidly expensive or from one supplier or when they refuse to make reasonable adjustments to uniform. We are way to laissez faire sometimes in this country.