SkieCan a student switch off location sharing?
No. The location permission is granted by Skie as the device owner, the Skie app cannot be stopped, cleared or uninstalled by the user, and the relevant settings are locked. If someone tries to tamper, the administrator is alerted. This only applies where the organisation chooses to use location, with consent.
On an ordinary phone a user can open settings and take location away from an app. On a managed device, Skie is the device owner. It grants its own location permission, blocks force stop and clearing data for managed apps, blocks uninstalling Skie and locks the settings a student would use to cut the connection.
Skie is built to be tamper-proof, and if anything ever did get through, the administrator is alerted straight away, down to the exact device. A missing check-in is itself treated as a breach, so a device that has gone quiet shows up in the breach centre.
A student can still do ordinary things that stop location from reaching the dashboard, such as switching the device off or leaving the building without a signal. That is why the dashboard shows last seen times and states such as Due, Overdue and Offline unusual, so an admin can see the difference between a drained battery and something stranger.
None of this is a reason to skip the conversation. Telling students that location is on, who looks at it and when is better practice, and it prevents the sense of secret surveillance. There is no hidden mode in Skie, and the device shows that it is managed.
A practical tip: when a student says location is wrong, treat it as a prompt to check the device. Use the compliance run on demand and a fresh location request to see what the device reports, and give the answer back to the student.