School gives all students free iPads to avoid have-nots

Te Akau ki Papamoa School room 11 and 12 students, pictured with teacher Monique Storey and principal Bruce Jepsen, were excited to use their new iPads. Photo/George Novak

A Western Bay school has spent more than $100,000 buying iPads for each of its senior students.

Te Akau ki Papamoa School principal Bruce Jepsen told the Bay of Plenty Times the school had trialled using iPads in a few classrooms over three years and a remarkable increase in achievement was seen.

Because of this, Mr Jepsen said the school had decided to buy an iPad, an Apple-branded tablet device, for each of its almost 600 students and hoped to roll them out to the rest of the school in 15 weeks' time.

This meant the financial burden was relieved from parents and all students had equal opportunities, regardless of socio-economic background.

Three hundred iPads were given to years 4, 5 and 6 students at the first day of school yesterday and the children were each taught how to look after them.

The school paid for half the $101,000 pricetag, with the other half coming from a TECT grant. Mr Jepsen said the school would have paid the full price itself if necessary. The money saved would be kept for upgrade and maintenance costs.

Students would still be taught regular day-to-day subjects such as handwriting, physical education, music and dance.

"The technology is not the learning, but supports it.

"Our school is a decile 4 but our students come from a whole range of ethnicities and backgrounds; we've noticed those things are irrelevant with one-to-one digital learning. In the five pilot classes, one thing we noticed was the accelerated learning. They were from a cross-section of different backgrounds but regardless of that, their learning was accelerated."

Other options such as bring-your-own devices and subleasing iPads were considered, but these were beyond many families' means.

"I don't believe in haves or have-nots; if it's good for the children and we have the data to support it, it gives us more reason to do it."

The school already had iMac computers in each of its classrooms and laptops available to book to classes, but Mr Jepsen said one-to-one, in which students had their own devices, was much more effective.

As technology dated quickly, he planned on replacing the devices every three years and would set aside a third of the funds each year out of its operational funding grant.

The devices would have been bought even without the TECT grant because the results were enough to support that decision, but the monetary support meant the technology could be rolled out more quickly and put the school a step ahead in saving money for replacements.