Esri UK's New GIS for Schools

Jason Sawle, a GIS Education Consultant in the Esri UK schools team, noted today on Twitter that Esri UK has launched a "new" GIS for Schools. I'm not sure what the "old" version was, but the new one offers ArcGIS for Desktop and ArcGIS Online to individual secondary schools.

ArcGIS for Desktop

Pricing:

The ArcGIS for Desktop schools annual subscription:
£250 + VAT per year
Includes Spatial Analyst, 3D Analyst and Network Analyst extensions
500 licences for your school site
Buy now

Educators are pointed to a free online course and can request a free inspection copy of Getting to Know ArcGIS® for Desktop.

ArcGIS Online for Schools

Pricing:

The ArcGIS Online for Schools annual subscription:
£250 + VAT per year
500 users
2500 Credits (more about credits here)
Discover how you can use it here
Buy now

I know here in the U.S. managing credits for schools is a challenge. The credits discussion at Esri UK's school's page states the 2500 are plenty.

This is a generous allocation of credits and should last for the duration of a one year subscription for a typical school.

The Esri UK ArcGIS Online for Schools resources include some generic (not education specific) getting started videos (Esri UK made) and a getting started PDF (Esri Redlands). There are also videos about the administration of ArcGIS Online (a mix of UK and US) but again, these are generic. And despite the demand in the U.S. (and I'm sure in the U.K.) for best practices information for organizations in general and educational organizations in particular, no such guidance is provided.

I share this information since I think it's valuable to see how different distributors support education. Clearly, in the U.S. the focus seems to be more on district, state and other broad licenses, rather than a single school.