How can I restrict iMessage on school iPads?

Not yet that I can find, and I agree that it's an important missing control. You can express your need for such a restriction to Apple via their feedback page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

The IP ports iMessage uses haven't been documented that I've found, but you can try blocking in your WiFI access point the ports used by Facetime, as given here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1629

and see if that does anything useful.

Regards.

I haven't been able to restrict iMessage but with the Faronics Insight app (we use Insight on our laptops) we can see what the students are doing on the iPads and target those individuals who violating the rules. Once the students are aware that we have this capability this type of behavior drops way off.

Yes, there is a way to restrict your students from using iMessage and any other application or feature for that matter. First, you need to make sure that your students login is NOT a standard account, but a managed account or a "Guest" account. I am assuming that your login has administrative rights for you to do this.

To change a standard account to a managed account, you need to turn on Parental Controls. When you are in the Parental Controls window, select the account from the left column, then you will see the right half of the window change and it will have some "tabs" near the top. There is a tab for "System". From here you can select which applications to allow. You will see a list with side-arrows pointing to items like iLife, Internet, Widgets, Other, Utilities, etc.

Make sure to click on the side-arrows, because that will pull down a list of items within that "folder" to help you be more specific about what to allow (check) or not allow (uncheck).

I did this for a computer lab and the students needed the administrative password for the programs that were unchecked. This discouraged them from messaging among other things.

Sorry, but how does this apply to an iPad? The managed accounts and restrictons you're referring to are part of Mac OS X and have nothing to do with nor an effect on any iOS device. I think perhaps you misunderstood the question.

Regards.

I realize this is an old post, but have there been any developments on restricting iMessage?

Not as of yet. Whether there will be anything in iOS 6 when it's released this fall is unknown.

Regards.

Yes, turn FaceTime off and iMessage will not work. Turn FaceTime off in Restrictions and ensure its a password that's HARD. The iMessage app will still be there, but will not be accessible even if they put in their Apple I.D.

Hope this helps :)

I have Facetime turned off in the Restrictions in my iPad and Messages still works just fine.

It does not help, because I have tried this and iMessage still works. You will not be able to block it until Apple chooses to allow this capability unless you want to block port 80 and 443 and not have any Internet service at all.

I want to turn off all texting and messaging on my son's phone late at night. I can turn off texts, but wifi and I-message I don't seem to have control. He has 4s. Is it possible?

Thank you so much!

ensure that an account is not set up in iMessage. Then, in restrcitions, under the "Allow Changes" heading, set "Accounts" to Do Not Allow Changes. This will set iMessage so a user can not log in with there apple id. Also restricts changed to mail, iCloud and since about January of 2013, the app store.

you can also restrict iMessage if you are supervising the device with Configurator

Here is a screenshot of the restriction NYLink is refering to.

Here are two easy to follow tutorials how to restrict imessages on iPad

http://www.bewebsmart.com/ipod-ipad-iphone/how-to-restrict-imessage/

this one is from Wayzata Public Schools site see if this comes in handy

https://wayzata.zendesk.com/entries/21440234-Block-iMessage-Use-on-Student-iPad