Nov. 19, 2025 /Mpelembe Media/ — Google Workspace for Education offers a tiered structure of services for educational institutions. It details three primary editions—Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, and the recommended Education Plus—each providing increasingly comprehensive features in areas like security, administration, and learning tools, with the latter two involving per-user fees. Furthermore, there are several optional, paid add-ons designed to supplement the core packages, focusing on functionalities such as advanced teaching and learning tools, endpoint device management, and additional data storage. These add-ons include premium artificial intelligence capabilities, specifically through Gemini Education, offering tailored enhancements for specific institutional requirements. Overall, Google Workspace for Education provides the flexible options available to meet diverse educational technology needs.
The three core Google Workspace for Education editions offer varying levels of security, management, and feature sets, scaling up in cost and capability from the foundational level to the comprehensive premium offering.
Here are the key distinctions between Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, and Education Plus:
1. Cost and Availability
| Edition | Cost/Availability |
|---|---|
| Education Fundamentals | Available at no charge for qualifying institutions. |
| Education Standard | $3 per student/year. |
| Education Plus | $5 per student/year. (This edition is marked as “Recommended”.) |
2. Core Functionality and Scope
- Education Fundamentals: This is described as a foundational suite of secure and easy-to-use tools for teaching and learning. It includes basic security and administrative tools in the Google Admin Console and core applications like Classroom, Docs, Gmail, Meet, Sheets, Chat, and Calendar.
- Education Standard: This edition focuses on adding advanced security, management, and analytics tools to help proactively protect against digital threats. It includes everything in Fundamentals, plus enhanced features.
- Education Plus: Positioned as an all-in-one solution, this edition includes everything in Fundamentals and Standard, along with premium teaching and learning capabilities.
3. Key Feature Upgrades
Security and Administration:
- Fundamentals: Provides standard security and administrative tools in the Google Admin Console.
- Standard: Introduces key security enhancements, including a central security dashboard for enhanced visibility, controls for preventing, detecting, and remediating security threats, and Chrome analytics with powerful data visualizations.
- Plus: Offers even more advanced security and analytics designed to help proactively prepare for and stop threats.
Teaching and Learning Tools:
- Fundamentals: Provides core tools like Classroom and Meet for collaboration.
- Plus: Specifically includes premium teaching and learning tools aimed at helping educators enhance instructional impact. It also includes Google Vids, which is described as an easy and collaborative video creation tool.
AI Features (Gemini App):
- Fundamentals: Includes the Gemini app, an AI-powered assistant for education, with added data protection.
- Standard and Plus: Both editions include the Gemini app with enterprise-grade data protection, which is an enhancement over the Fundamentals offering.
Storage:
- Fundamentals: Provides 100 TB of pooled Cloud storage.
- Plus: Offers Advanced Drive storage for each staff and student license. (The sources do not specify the storage allowance for Standard.)
| Feature | Education Fundamentals | Education Standard | Education Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core Offering | Foundational Suite | Advanced Security & Analytics | All-in-one Solution/Recommended |
| Security Dashboard/Controls | No (Basic tools only) | Yes (Central dashboard, prevent/detect/remediate) | Yes (Advanced security and analytics) |
| Premium Teaching Tools | No | No | Yes |
| Google Vids | No | No | Yes |
| Storage | 100 TB pooled storage | (Not specified) | Advanced Drive storage per staff/student license |
| Gemini Data Protection | Added data protection | Enterprise-grade data protection | Enterprise-grade data protection |
The distinction between the editions can be understood as stepping up from basic collaborative tools (Fundamentals) to crucial security infrastructure (Standard), and finally to an encompassing platform that integrates high-level security with premium instructional resources (Plus).
The optional Google Workspace add-ons, which are sold separately, enhance and extend the core functionality of the standard education editions by providing premium features tailored for specific user groups or institutional needs, such as enhanced teaching, advanced AI access, better device management, and expanded storage.
Here is a breakdown of how each optional add-on enhances and extends core functionality:
1. Teaching and Learning Add-on
This add-on enhances core instructional impact by providing personalized learning tools.
- Extension: It introduces advanced management features in Google Meet and Classroom.
- Enhancement: It includes unlimited originality reports.
- Additional Functionality: It provides additional Drive storage.
2. Gemini Add-ons (Gemini Education and Gemini Education Premium)
These add-ons extend the built-in AI capabilities found in the core editions, which already include the Gemini app.
- Gemini Education:
- Extension: It enables generative AI integrated in workflows with Gemini across Google Workspace apps.
- Enhancement: It allows users to chat with Gemini.
- Security: It is accompanied by enterprise-grade data protection.
- Gemini Education Premium:
- Full Access: It provides full access to generative AI across Workspace.
- Enhanced Features: Users get everything included in Gemini Education, plus advanced meetings with Gemini in Meet.
- Security Extension: It offers more proactive security with AI-enhanced data loss prevention, and full access to generative AI capabilities.
3. Endpoint Education Upgrade
This add-on focuses on managing and securing the devices that access institutional data.
- Extension: It delivers advanced mobile device management and enhanced security controls.
- Functionality: These controls help you manage devices and laptops that access the institution’s data.
4. Workspace Additional Storage
This add-on addresses institutional storage requirements.
- Extension: It helps institutions meet their storage demands by providing additional pooled storage that they can purchase as needed and easily manage across the institution.
In essence, while the core editions (Fundamentals, Standard, Plus) provide tiered levels of security, management, and teaching tools, these add-ons act like specialized modules, allowing institutions to invest specifically in areas like advanced AI access, device security, or tailored instructional impact without having to upgrade their entire core edition.
Get the Google Workspace for Education overview