The extraordinary overhead of printing, purchasing and distributing education texts alone would seem to make this a no brainer. The cost of supplying 840 pupil

The extraordinary overhead of printing, purchasing and distributing education texts alone would seem to make this a no brainer. The cost of supplying 840 pupils with iPads and covers, even at consumer rates, would only be around £350K. From the stated numbers, this would be recouped in saved photocopying bills alone in around five years. Clearly there will be significant software and operations costs, but I would speculate that the less obvious time and material savings (e.g. updating a hand-out from a previous class to reflect new teaching best practices) would more than offset these costs. Centralising resources is a natural side effect of digital distribution, and encourages resource sharing at all levels of the organisation. It's easy to think up other small but significant wins enabled by this approach. We've probably all had the experience of watching a stand-in teacher struggle to fill the lesson time because the regular guy has become suddenly indisposed. With good systems in place it's easy to imagine this being a non-problem.