IT Disposal for Schools, Academy Trusts, Colleges and Universities

Three things make schools and universities unlike a normal office. First, the data belongs to children. Safeguarding records, pastoral notes and CCTV of pupils are among the most sensitive categories anywhere, and where a school uses biometric cashless catering or library systems, biometric templates of children sit inside the hardware too. Second, the devices are managed. A Chromebook that leaves site still enrolled in your Google Admin console, or an iPad still assigned in Apple School Manager, is both a security loose end and a device with no resale value — so enrolment status is checked and reported, not ignored. Third, the window is short. Most estate work happens in six weeks of summer, alongside decorators, flooring contractors and a new build handover.

Where your policy requires it, witnessed on-site destruction is available — drives shredded at your premises with your staff watching. Everything else travels GPS-tracked, with driver location monitored, handled only by our own BS 7858 security-screened staff — no couriers, no third parties — to our Environment Agency licensed facility.

Erasing a Chromebook is not the same as removing it from your domain, and a wiped iPad can still be tied to Apple School Manager. Devices that arrive still enrolled, still locked to a management account or still carrying Activation Lock are treated as non-releasable and physically destroyed, with the destruction certified per device against its serial number. Nothing enrolled in your console is resold, redeployed or passed to a third party — the device is shredded, and the serial appears on your Data Destruction Certificate as evidence of exactly that.

Every data-bearing device is logged and serialised on our ITAD management system: serial number in, certified outcome out. Your Data Destruction Certificate records quantities and methods; your IT Asset Audit report (if required) lists every device individually — reconcilable against your asset register, your capital funding records and your insurance schedule, and answerable when a governor, an internal auditor, a trust finance lead or a subject access request asks how equipment holding pupil data was dealt with. The full standards detail lives on our secure data destruction page.

Reuse is assessed before recycling: equipment with working life left has a far lower environmental cost kept in service than shredded. Every collection produces an ESG Report showing what was reused, what was recycled and what was diverted from landfill — usable in your trust’s sustainability reporting, your Climate Action Plan work, and in the environmental evidence students and governors increasingly ask for. Processing takes place at our Environment Agency licensed facility under ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001 and ISO 45001 certified processes.