Hard sell and hardware

Bring Your Own Device is sending parents into debt, helped by schools who provide retailer and lender details. Schools drive the market, but it’s families who pay. The prices are ‘ridiculous’. Tech companies are visiting New Zealand to examine this wor

Parents spending up large on digital devices for their children’s schoolwork should get tax rebates, says former principal Graham Prentice.

Around half of schools (48 per cent) have ‘‘bring your own device’’ (BYOD) policies, according to research done for the Ministry of Education by private market intelligence company IDC.

Globally, the school BYOD market is growing rapidly into a multibillion-dollar industry, and here in New Zealand, Noel Leeming believes it is worth tens of millions in device sales every year.

But while parents help fund schools through tax-deductible school donations, there’s no tax rebate available on the laptops, Chromebooks and tablets that schools ask parents to buy for their children.

That’s not fair, says Prentice, from device retailer Cyclone, one of the retailers schools regularly steer parents to in their BYOD schemes.

‘‘If I tithe to my church, I will get 30 per cent back,’’ Prentice says.

Contrast that to a parent who has to spend $500-$600 on a BYOD education device.

BYOD programmes took off just under a decade ago, when Orewa College became the first school in Auckland to set its sights on a 1:1 ratio of digital devices to students.

Lacking money, the school sought ‘‘alternative means’’ of funding the devices students needed, according to Aucklandbased BYOD consultancy Isometric Solutions.

Parents were identified as the source of the funding.

A small proportion of the school community objected, Prentice says, but rapid results quickly silenced the critics.

As the BYOD model expanded, a close relationship between the state education sector and for-profit technology companies and consultancies developed.

It’s so close now that some schools direct parents to buy from a menu of specific devices from individually-named retailers, and even, on occasion, provide the names of finance companies.

Alwyn Poole, academic adviser of the Villa Education Trust, which runs three schools in Auckland (which all own devices their students can use), says the tech industry and the ministry ‘‘hold hands’’.

‘‘Makes me laugh when people say ‘profit should not be made from education’ and all sorts of organisations/ businesses clip the tickets.’’

He sees BYOD as something of an experiment, using families’ money, and says evidence that the increasing use of devices improves learning is weak.

‘‘We are almost in retrospective research mode,’’ he says – going digital, and then checking whether it was a good thing.

And parents are not getting good deals: ‘‘The prices are so far above cost, it’s ridiculous.’’

The ministry believes in the ‘‘potential’’ of digital learning, and has been a tacit supporter of the rise of BYOD.

‘‘Our research to date indicates that digital devices (whether BYOD or school provided) have the potential to lift educational results when used as part of a holistic and comprehensive approach to teaching and learning,’’ says the ministry’s chief digital officer, Stuart Wakefield.

The ministry has provided schools with uncapped data, firewalls, security software and funding and support to get teachers up to speed.

This taxpayer investment has given the edu-tech industry a foundation to grow sales.

Device suppliers are not the only ones gaining. Software providers have found the relationship profitable. The ministry has entered national software licensing arrangements with Microsoft and Google, and private sector education software developers such as Mathletics, Banqer and Minecraft Education (Microsoft) earn a couple of dollars per student per week, often funded from school donations.

Private researcher IDC found that IT providers are an influential source of advice to schools. But it’s a two-way relationship.

Schools have bought into the ministry’s belief in the potential of digital education, and their preferences are reshaping the digital device market.

In affluent suburbs, BYOD may focus on top-end laptops, but Noel Leeming’s education sales manager, Adam Miller, pointed to the rise of the simple, affordable Chromebook as an indicator of schools’ power.

Chromebooks, selling for hundreds of dollars, rather than several thousand, are now the ‘‘laptop of choice’’ at many schools, having taken over the early BYOD running made by more expensive Apple products. And Chromebooks are making a jump from the education sector into homes.

Global tech companies now visit New Zealand to learn from our BYOD market.

‘‘New Zealand is seen as a world leader. We were one of the first countries to have schools going down the BYOD path,’’ says IDC researcher Louise Francis.

There’s one unusual feature of the BYOD market – schools are the primary drivers, not the parents who do the buying.

Parents’ voices have not been directly heard, and offers of finance, and charitable trusts offering lease-to-buy options for parents, show schools are aware many families have to go into debt to fund BYOD.

Francis says IDC iss conducting more research for the ministry to find out what parents think of this.

‘‘Makes me laugh when people say ‘profit should not be made from education’ and all sorts of organisations/businesses clip the tickets.’’ Alwyn Poole Villa Education Trust