Ipad for learning - any experiences?

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

DD starts secondary school in September. Her new school has a scheme where they all have to have Ipads, which the school can provide at a cost. Alternatively we can provide her own.

I am not entirely sure whether to opt in - it doesn't actually look any better value than buying one ourselves and I am a bit at the idea that even after we have paid fully, it still belongs to the school until she leaves. Also, I would want to make sure the parental controls on it were up to scratch.

Or is it simpler to just go with the scheme so that the school will be dealing with insurance and will repair it if it breaks?

Does anyone have any advice?
Thanks!

Both my DCs had similar schemes - DD now in y11 had a laptop which we paid £9 per month for over three years - it was worn out and so slow as to be unusable by the time we had paid it off, and nobody really used them after y9. They changed to iPads when DS started three years ago, and we opted to go for the school package where they provided an iPad, insurance cover and several paid-for apps for £12 a month over three years. We will have paid it off in September, and it's still going strong. They still use it in many lessons, and it has been massively useful to have at home too.

In both cases the insurance terms were pretty steep - they would only repair them (say for a cracked screen) if certain conditions were met (eg they had to be using a protective cover, it had to be in a bag at the time etc). It could be that buying your own tablet you would have more control over the type of policy you took out.

I'm quite glad we went for the ipad on the whole, but lots of people opted to bring their own tablet in - not all went for iPads, many parents went for different types and they seem to have got along fine.

Odd that they want to retain ownership of it until your DD leaves - I'm not sure I would have stood for that! Our school give us a certificate of ownership after three years, which you can take along to the IT office and they take the administrator controls off.

Thanks very much, AnsweringWhy - that's very helpful.

Ours have to be IPads, which is fair enough. I will check out the insurance terms - I had assumed it would be quite comprehensive, so it's worth knowing it might not be.

I can see why the school would want to retain ownership, it just seems somewhat unreasonable!

My ds's school has an iPad scheme. It's the mini and we paid £20 a term for 3 years. Every iPad is engraved with the child's name and obviously they therefore become ours at the end of the three years. They use them all the time in lessons and for homework and the school sets the parental controls. School can see everything anyone uploads and in three years about a tiny handful of kids have had their iPads withdrawn from them because of breaking the school rules on content.

I've been very happy with the scheme I have to say as everyone has exactly the same iPad it has worked well and £20 a term was affordable for everyone.

Thanks, Mimble.
Yes, given that they are going to insist on IPads, I'm glad they have standard ones. DD is the sort of person who would be constantly nagging me for the latest otherwise.