Industry

Microsoft solutions for Education

Thousands of devices, a small team, and safeguarding that is not optional.

Context

What this sector is dealing with

Schools, colleges, and universities run device fleets that rival a mid-size enterprise, with a fraction of the IT staff and a duty of care that no commercial organisation carries. Students are users, targets, and occasionally the threat actor.

Microsoft pushes a well-defined stack at education, and most institutions already hold more of it than they use. We help you turn Microsoft 365 Education into a managed, safeguarded, and secure estate rather than a licence entitlement sitting unused.

Pressures

The problems we get called in for

Safeguarding duty

Student wellbeing and online safety obligations sit on top of ordinary security, and both need evidence.

Device fleet at scale

Shared, one-to-one, and personal devices across campuses, managed by a team of a handful of people.

Student and staff identity

Thousands of accounts created and retired every year, with self-service password reset or a queue at the help desk.

Budget and licence entitlement

Education licensing is generous, and most of it goes unused because nobody had time to deploy it.

Microsoft solutions

What Microsoft brings to education

The products that genuinely apply to this sector, and what each one is actually for here. Much of this sits inside licensing you may already hold.

Microsoft 365 Education

This is what Microsoft pushes hardest in education, and for good reason. A3 and A5 carry the collaboration, security, and compliance tooling most institutions are already entitled to. A5 in particular includes Defender, Purview, and Entra ID P2 capability that schools often buy separately without realising they already hold it.

Microsoft Intune for Education

The purpose-built path for school device fleets. Windows Autopilot and Apple School Manager enrolment, shared device and one-to-one configuration, app deployment by class rather than by ticket, and Windows 11 SE support for low-cost classroom hardware. Set Up School PCs handles the bulk provisioning nobody has time to do by hand.

Microsoft Teams for Education

Class Teams, Assignments, and Insights are the teaching layer Microsoft builds specifically for education, with reading progress and grading built in. The governance work matters here: naming, expiry, and guest policy, or you end up with thousands of orphaned class teams.

Microsoft Defender XDR

Defender for Office 365 against the phishing that targets staff payroll and finance, and Defender for Endpoint across the fleet. Included in A5, and available as an add-on to A3.

Microsoft Purview

Student data classification, retention, and communication compliance supporting your safeguarding and data protection obligations, with eDiscovery for the requests that arrive.

Microsoft Entra ID

School Data Sync brings roster data in so accounts and class membership are created from the source of truth. Self-service password reset alone removes the largest single category of help desk tickets in most institutions.

How we help

Typical engagements in this sector

The projects we are most often brought in to deliver for education, from full implementations to targeted uplifts.

01

Intune for Education fleet rollout

Autopilot, Apple School Manager, shared device and one-to-one configuration, so a broken laptop is replaced without a technician touching it.

02

A3 or A5 entitlement review

We map what your education agreement already includes against what is deployed, which almost always finds unused security capability.

03

Teams for Education governance

Class Teams with naming, expiry, and guest policy, so you do not end up with thousands of orphaned class sites.

04

Safeguarding and data protection with Purview

Classification, retention, and communication compliance configured against your safeguarding policy, with eDiscovery for the requests that arrive.

Compliance

Frameworks that shape the work

These are the frameworks and regulations we most often design against in education. We map Microsoft controls to the framework you are actually held to, and build the evidence trail as we go rather than reconstructing it the week before an audit.

GDPR

GDPR and UK GDPR

Lawful handling of personal data, with real duties around retention, subject access, and breach notification timelines.

FERPA

FERPA

US protection of student education records, governing who may see them and what you may disclose.

COPPA

COPPA

US rules on collecting data from children under 13, which shape what you may switch on for younger year groups.

KCSIE

Keeping Children Safe in Education

UK statutory safeguarding guidance, including duties around online safety and filtering that sit on top of ordinary security.

CE+

Cyber Essentials Plus

A UK baseline that is independently tested, and increasingly a condition of winning public sector and enterprise contracts.

ISO

ISO 27001

The information security management standard most enterprise buyers and auditors ask for by name. It wants a system, not a set of tools.

Working in education? Let us look at your estate.

Book a discovery call and we will walk through what you already own, what is switched on, and where the gaps are that matter in your sector.