Eligibility and setup
Domain and education verification, organisational units by phase and grade, and the school's name and logo on sign-in pages.
Microsoft 365 Education, Copilot and Google Workspace for Education
Google Workspace for Education and Microsoft 365 Education give a school, college or university email, storage, classes and collaboration on its own domain; Microsoft 365 Copilot for education adds an AI assistant to Microsoft's apps. Arke Technologies advises on licensing, then sets up, migrates, secures and supports either platform for education institutions across South Africa.
What Microsoft 365 Education and Google Workspace for Education are
Both give every learner and staff member an account on the school's own domain, with email, storage, documents, video meetings and a place to set and hand in work. Each has a no-cost edition for qualifying institutions, verified by the vendor at sign-up, and paid editions that add security, management and teaching tools.
Microsoft 365 Education, often still called Office 365 Education, O365 Education or MS Office 365 Education, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Teams for Education, OneDrive and SharePoint, with accounts in Entra ID and school devices managed through Intune.
Google Workspace for Education, known until 2021 as G Suite for Education and sometimes called Google Suite for Education, includes Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Meet and Google Classroom, run from the Google Admin console alongside Chromebooks.
The benefits of either, set up properly: one account per person, created and removed centrally; work saved to the cloud, so a lost device or a power cut loses nothing; and security and retention controls a school can show its governing body. The platform is one part of our education IT services.
Microsoft 365 Copilot for education: get the data ready first
Microsoft 365 Copilot for education is Microsoft's AI assistant inside Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and Teams, grounded in the files, email and chats each user can already open. It drafts lesson plans, turns notes into quizzes and summarises staff meetings. Schools license Microsoft 365 Copilot for staff as a paid add-on at an education price; Copilot Chat, grounded in the web, comes with a school account.
The risk is oversharing. Copilot surfaces anything a user may open, so learner medical notes shared with the whole school become searchable in plain language. Before Copilot is switched on, we:
- Review licences and decide who needs Copilot first.
- Find and fix oversharing in SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams.
- Apply sensitivity labels and data-loss prevention to learner records, medical notes and assessments.
- Pilot with a small group of teachers and measure adoption before buying more licences.
Google offers Gemini in Workspace for Education on a similar basis, and the same clean-up applies. We roll out either assistant under our Emergent Intelligence framework for responsible AI: AI recommends and people decide, audit logging is switched on so AI use can be reviewed, and we never train models on a school's data without explicit consent. See Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness and AI governance.
What we set up, migrate and manage
Accounts at scale
Accounts created from SA-SAMS class lists, moved up a grade each January and closed when learners leave. Old G Suite for Education accounts, and consumer accounts teachers opened with a school email address, are brought under school control.
Migration
Mail, files and classes moved from servers, personal accounts, an old G Suite domain, or between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, with cut-over in the holidays. See data migration.
Security baseline
Multi-factor authentication for staff, admin roles split across named people, sharing rules by grade, safe search, retention and eDiscovery.
Desktop apps
Where the licence includes them, we install the Office 365 Education desktop apps through Intune and keep every lab PC on the same version, with no manual installs.
Learning platforms
Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams for Education and Moodle, connected to school accounts and to SA-SAMS. See school management software.
Training
Microsoft 365 Education training and Google Workspace for Education training for teachers, in short sessions built around real lessons.
Support
A staff help desk under an SLA, with Google Workspace for Education support cases and Microsoft escalations handled by us.
Teachers, homeschool families and university students
Free Office 365 for teachers and students. Teachers and students at a qualifying school use Office 365 Education free on the web with their school email address. Google Workspace for teachers works the same way, through the school's domain rather than a personal Gmail address.
Office 365 for homeschool families. Education editions are for recognised institutions, so a family teaching at home usually needs a consumer Microsoft 365 plan, or accounts through a registered learning centre or online school.
Microsoft 365 for university students. Universities and TVET colleges usually license students through the institution, often under the student use benefit, so students sign in with an institutional account instead of buying Office 365 themselves. See IT for universities, TVET colleges and training providers.
Risks we plan out
- Admin access held by one teacher. Super-administrator credentials stay with the school, split across named people and protected with multi-factor authentication.
- Leavers keeping access. Leavers' accounts are suspended, and their data kept or deleted to a written schedule, as POPIA's retention condition requires.
- Grey-market keys. Cheap keys sold online are often volume or education keys resold against the vendor's terms, and can stop working with no recourse. Every licence we supply is genuine and in the school's name.
- No backup. Both platforms keep the service running but are not a backup of deleted work; we add backup with tested restores.
Governance, POPIA, procurement and continuity
- SLA and reporting. An SLA fixes scope, response and resolution times, exclusions and escalation paths. Each month you receive a service review and report on licence use, storage, security alerts and tickets.
- Change control. Tenant-wide settings, such as sharing and retention, change only through a recorded request and approval.
- POPIA. Most learner records are children's personal information, which POPIA protects more strictly. We configure data minimisation, encryption, access controls and audit logging, and document where each platform stores data. See cybersecurity, POPIA and online safety for schools.
- Board governance. King IV Principle 12 asks the governing body to govern technology and information; the monthly report gives school governing bodies and college councils the record.
- Procurement. Arke Technologies is a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor, giving 135% procurement recognition (sworn affidavit available on request). Company documents, our CSD number and tax compliance status are available on request. We work from a proposal and your purchase order, or answer your request for quotation or tender with SBD forms where required; where a department is the buyer, we work to PFMA disciplines. See company facts for procurement teams.
- Continuity. The tenant, domain, data and super-administrator credentials stay in the school's name, and we hand over cleanly if you leave. A certified team supports you remote-first from Johannesburg under one contract: one accountable team.