iPads have become part of everyday nursery life. They run the register, handle parent communication, hold learning journals and take photos of the children. In most settings, though, they were set up by hand, signed into somebody's own Apple account, and cannot be controlled or recovered from anywhere else. That is a real gap. This guide explains why it matters and what proper iPad management looks like.
Why an unmanaged iPad is a risk
Think about what is on a typical room iPad: photos of children, their names and ages, sometimes medical or dietary notes, parent contact details, and logged-in access to the apps that store all of it.
Now think about the ways one goes missing. Left on a bus after an outing. Picked up from a buggy in the hallway. Walking out of the door with a member of staff who has just left.
An unmanaged iPad cannot be located or wiped remotely. If it was set up on someone's personal Apple account, you may not even be able to prove it was a work device. What should be an inconvenience becomes a data breach involving children's information, with GDPR, Ofsted and Care Inspectorate Wales all taking an interest.
With managed devices, the same situation is routine. A lost iPad can be found, locked or wiped from a web page within minutes, and it holds nothing personal, because it was never anyone's personal device.
What "managed" actually means
There are two parts, and you need both.
Apple Business Manager is Apple's free service for organisations. It lets the nursery own its iPads in Apple's records, rather than them belonging to whoever happened to sign in first. In April 2026 Apple folded Apple Business Manager into a wider free platform called Apple Business, so you may see that name on Apple's site. The principle is unchanged: whatever else you do, if your nursery uses iPads, it should have an account.
Mobile device management (MDM) does the day-to-day controlling. It pushes settings to every iPad, installs the right apps, enforces a passcode and gives you remote lock and wipe.
Put simply: Apple Business Manager proves the iPads are yours. The MDM platform is the control panel.
Supervised mode, in plain English
You will hear the word "supervised" a lot. A supervised iPad is one that Apple recognises as owned by an organisation. That gives the nursery more control than it would have over a personal device: you can turn off features such as AirDrop, limit the App Store, filter web browsing, update apps silently and stop staff removing the management altogether.
Supervision is set when the iPad is first set up, not added afterwards. The easiest way to get it is through automatic enrolment, below. iPads enrolled that way are supervised from the moment they are switched on.
Devices that arrive ready to work
Apple calls this Automated Device Enrolment. You will still hear its old name, DEP, used a lot.
It works like this. When you buy iPads from Apple, or from an Apple Authorised Reseller that is linked to your Apple Business Manager account, they are registered to the nursery at the point of sale. When a new iPad is switched on for the first time, it already knows it belongs to you. It enrols itself in your MDM and sets itself up with the right apps, Wi-Fi, settings and restrictions. Nobody has to configure it by hand, so nothing gets missed.
This is why buying through the right channel matters. An iPad picked up from a supermarket or a marketplace will not be registered automatically. It can still be added manually using Apple Configurator, which erases the device during the process. For the first 30 days after a manually added iPad is enrolled, it can still be released from management, so it is worth checking it has settled in properly.
The most useful part: management cannot be removed just by wiping the device. If someone factory resets an enrolled iPad, it checks in with Apple as it starts up and comes straight back under the nursery's control. That is exactly what you want from a tablet holding children's data.
The platform we use
The MDM platform we use is Hexnode. It covers everything a nursery needs:
- Passcodes on every device. No iPad can be used without one.
- Apps pushed to every iPad at once. Your parent communication and register apps go on every device together, and updates follow automatically.
- Wi-Fi profiles. Each iPad gets the nursery's Wi-Fi settings pushed to it, so staff never need to know the password.
- Single-app mode. Where it is useful, an iPad can be locked to one app, for example a sign-in screen at reception.
- Locate, lock and wipe. A missing iPad can be found, locked with a message on the screen, or wiped completely.
The principle holds for any reputable MDM platform. The value is in having one at all.
The leaver angle
Devices are part of the leaver problem, which our leavers checklist covers in full. When someone leaves, a managed iPad lets you remove their work account, apps and saved logins remotely, without touching any of their personal data.
Wi-Fi is the other half. If a former member of staff knew the Wi-Fi password, you should change it. With managed devices you change it once, push the new profile, and every iPad picks it up automatically, instead of someone going round each room retyping it.
Shared logins on iPads belong in a password manager rather than on a sticky note. We use Keeper for this, and our guide to access control for nurseries covers the same thinking for the front door.
What good looks like
A well-managed nursery:
- owns its iPads through Apple Business Manager;
- buys new iPads through Apple or an authorised reseller linked to that account, so they enrol themselves;
- enrols every device in an MDM platform, so each one sets itself up and stays supervised;
- enforces a passcode on every iPad;
- can locate, lock or wipe any device from a web page within minutes;
- sets up new devices without anyone touching them, and offboards leavers in a couple of clicks.
If any of those are missing, our managed IT support covers device management alongside everything else, and our jargon buster explains any of the terms here.
The one thing to take away
Your iPads hold some of the most sensitive information in the nursery, and most settings could do very little if one went missing tomorrow. Own them through Apple Business Manager and enrol them in MDM, and a lost iPad can be found or wiped, new ones set themselves up, and leavers can be removed cleanly. That is the difference between a lost iPad being a serious data breach and a minor inconvenience.