Education discount for bulk purchases of computers and iPads
Hi! We’ve opened a small, grade 6-12 school. Is there a discount available to buy computers and iPads in bulk?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iPhone 14 Pro Max, iOS 18
Congratulations on opening your school. I will make the assumption you are in the United States. Different countries have different requirements/processes. If you are not in the US, seek your regional equivalent of below.
You should be reaching out to Apple Education to discover who your local rep is. You can send an email to useducation@apple.com and introduce yourself, your school, and your mission. Once you have established the relationship, you can request the creation of an Apple School Manager tenant and request an eCommerce site for education. The eCommerce site will allow you to establish terms but also provide you with a custom online store to purchase equipment (and App Store Credits). Note, there are options for multipacks in the store. When buying in bulk I always recommend my EDU customers purchase the multipacks. You will save money but you will also get less packaging. Trust me, when you are unboxes hundreds of devices, the less packaging, the better.
Apple School Manager is a free service provided by Apple to establish and enforce chain of custody of hard (Macs, iPads, etc.) and soft (App Store apps and books) assets. It also allows integration into your identity provider and school management system (you may not have one yet, but when you do...). Apple School Manager is NOT an MDM. To manage your devices you should be deploying an MDM. The MDM will allow you to rapidly deploy, continually manage, and restrict functions on the devices. If you embrace an educational system, you can also grant teachers observe and focus capabilities to keep students on task. And finally, the MDM will help with both one-to-one deployment initiatives as well as shared device deployments.
Note, there are also requirements to follow for children under 13. Review and understand FERPA, CIPA, and COPPA to esure you are complying with child protection. Get parental consent. Implement a content filter. Draft an acceptable use policy and ensure that students and parents consent to its limitations, monitoring, and penalties.
If you have never setup an MDM, I encourage you to use the Apple Consultants Network to find a qualified expect to assist in the process. I say it all the time to new customers... Deploying an MDM makes managing your fleet easy. Deploying an MDM is hard.
Hope this is helpful. Good luck on your journey.