Every child deserves a working laptop: How subscription finance is closing the EdTech gap

Walk into a secondary school in an affluent area, and you'll likely find a well-stocked IT suite, a one-to-one device programme, and an interactive screen in every classroom. These are the schools where the PTA raises tens of thousands of pounds each year to plug any gaps in government funding – and it shows. 

Walk into a school in a more deprived area, however – often one with a leaky roof, a stretched support staff team, and a bare bones budget – and the picture can be very different.

A classroom of thirty pupils sharing fifteen laptops of varying makes, models and conditions. Glitchy interactive screens that have been out of warranty for three years. Tablets with screens so smashed that teachers have stopped trying to use them in lessons.

You can probably guess which school is most advantageous for a child’s learning, but let’s explore why in more detail …

Why all children deserve working technology

Faster, more reliable tech is something all children deserve to be able to access at school, for two reasons:

1. Digital fluency is now a baseline expectation in most careers and in higher education. Pupils who spend their school years working on reliable, current devices develop practical competencies that their less well-equipped peers simply don't get the same opportunity to build. 

Collaborative tools, creative software, coding environments, document production, research habits – these skills accumulate gradually, over years of consistent access.

Employers across almost every sector now assume a level of IT competency that, a generation ago, would have been considered specialist knowledge. Schools that can't provide consistent access to modern technology are putting their pupils at a disadvantage in the job market.

2. Accessibility features in modern devices can transform the classroom experience for pupils with learning differences. Text-to-speech, speech-to-text, adjustable fonts and display settings, screen readers, and focus tools are built into every current iPad, laptop and Chromebook as standard. For a child with dyslexia, ADHD, or a visual processing difficulty, access to these tools can be the difference between engaging with a lesson and disengaging from it entirely.

A cracked screen is an inconvenience for most pupils. For a child with visual difficulties, it may make independent learning close to impossible. An unsupported operating system loses its latest accessibility updates alongside everything else – and those updates matter to real children in real classrooms.

The pupils most likely to attend schools with the smallest technology budgets are also statistically the most likely to have experienced disadvantage in other areas of their lives. The overlap between deprivation and special educational needs is well-documented. Which means the schools that can least afford to keep their technology current are often the ones where up-to-date, accessible devices would make the most difference.

The funding gap is real and it affects learning

The UK government funds state schools through a combination of per-pupil allocations and targeted grants. In theory, every state school receives funding; in practice, the gap between what schools receive and what they need to function well is significant. Capital budgets – the money set aside for purchasing equipment and making improvements – are especially squeezed.

The maths of equipping a whole school with modern devices from capital budgets often doesn't add up. A set of thirty laptops will easily run into five figures. Multiply that across multiple year groups, add in interactive screens, and the shortfall becomes stark. Schools make do. They buy in small batches – a few devices here, a few there – building a patchwork of equipment in different states of repair, with different operating systems, different compatibility issues, and different security vulnerabilities.

For suppliers of EdTech, this creates a frustrating dynamic. Schools want what you're selling. The teachers know it would make a difference. But the budget simply isn't there to say yes to the full proposal.

The subscription model changes what's possible

Our sister company Classroom as a Service (ClaaS) aims to solve this problem. The core principle is straightforward: instead of asking a school to find a large sum of capital to buy equipment outright, we finance the purchase ourselves and the school pays us back in regular, manageable installments over the life of the asset.

In practice, this means a school that could only afford to buy ten laptops outright can instead take delivery of thirty on day one, and spread the cost in a way that works within their ongoing revenue budget. 

For suppliers, the difference in deal size can be significant. We often find that schools ordering through our subscription model take on two to three times more units than they would have bought outright with their available capital.

The other major benefit of the subscription model is the protection it offers against obsolescence. Most IT leases are around 3 years: long enough to get plenty of use out of the devices but no so long they start to slow down and need lots of maintenance. 

At the end of the contract, suppliers have a built-in opportunity to make another sale, because the school will be offered the opportunity to renew and receive a new fleet of equipment. It’s the same principle as upgrading a mobile phone at the end of the contract.

Supply with ClaaS

Every child in every state school in the country deserves access to technology that works. Achieving that consistently, across schools with very different budgets, requires a model that doesn't rely on capital spending power alone.

Subscription finance is a practical, scalable way to close the gap between what schools want for their pupils and what their budgets currently allow them to buy.

If you supply EdTech to schools and you've experienced the frustration of proposals that stall because of budget constraints, we'd love to talk. Find out more about partnering with ClaaS at classroomasaservice.co.uk/suppliers.