Upgrading BYOD Devices To Win10 Education

UPDATE:  I have had a number of schools asking me whether this upgrade path below allows students in a BYOD programme with MacBooks to upgrade to Win10 Edu for dual booting. The good news is that the answer is YES. Because Mac OSX / Mac OS is considered a qualifying license for the Windows Volume Licensing programme, students would be able to obtain a copy of Win10 Edu if their school sets up the Kivuto portal below. This PDF is the best source for further information.

I’ve recently come across a few schools that are unsure how they can upgrade student-owned BYOD devices from Windows 7/8 or 10 Home edition to Windows 10 Education edition. The main reason schools would want to do this is to manage the devices using a tool such as Microsoft inTune to push out apps or policy and, in rare instances, joining BYOD to the school’s domain. The second major benefit is moving students off older versions of Windows (7 or 8/8.1) to the latest release of Windows 10.

Provided the school is licensing their faculty correctly, they can extend a free upgrade to Win10 Education to their students too.

There is a good comparison between Windows 10 Home / Pro / Education editions here.

To achieve this, Microsoft has partnered with Kivuto to manage the software distribution through a private portal for each school. The process is pretty straight forward:

1. Schools need to sign up for the programme by clicking here
   1. Schools need to provide their EES / MoE Agreement Number
2. Verification generally takes only a few days
3. The Kivuto Store Front is set up for the school
   1. This can be branded / themed to match school requirements
4. Promotional material can be acquired to encourage students to upgrade to Windows 10 Education edition.

 There are plenty of reasons why schools want to be standardizing on Windows 10 as a platform for staff and students and with this option, they can now easily ensure student-owned BYOD devices are running the same platform as school-owned devices for no additional cost.

Additionally, the Windows 10 Education license is a perpetual one so even after the student leaves the school they can retain the Windows 10 license on their current device, which adds even more value to this opportunity for students.

If schools are interested in upgrading their school-owned devices to Win10 Pro Education then instructions for completing this can be found here, along with reasons why this would be of interest to schools.