A Mac mini is a 12.7cm square that sits behind a monitor and stays there. For a computer room that matters more than it sounds: nothing needs charging overnight, nothing walks out in a bag, and every seat can run wired Ethernet instead of fighting thirty other devices for the same access point. The current generation runs the M4 chip, with an M4 Pro option for media and coding rooms.

The catch is that a mini is a computer and nothing else. Each unit needs a display, a keyboard and a mouse, and the school needs a plan for enrolment and management before the boxes are opened. Work through the sections below in that order - desk hardware first, then deployment - because the second is where school Mac rollouts usually stall.