School books are normally overpriced, but they are expected to last 5 years. A laptop will not survive 5 years in the hands of a kid, and even if it does it is so obsolete that you wouldn't want to use it.
Every school I've went to growing up had cheap usually out of date desktop computers bought in bulk. They were old and ugly. But they were fine, most of the time it was just used for reading or word processing. Sometimes google or an e-course. You don't need a lot of power for that. They kept those computers for ages, I am pretty sure way past 5 years.
When my younger brother went through high school they gave everyone cheap laptops and if you broke it you paid for it, that seemed to work fine. Lots of really young kids are getting cell phones these days and managing to take care of them. I think that's probably helping teach them to be careful with electronics.
I will say similarly I think the 42 Code School in Fremont, CA mostly relies on e-courses and group collaboration with minimal teacher help. I have a friend who goes there. It is more college level. https://www.42.us.org/
I think a key thing with both of these schools is that to some degree the students wanted to be there. The alternative high school was opened in my area mostly to help people who really wanted to finish high school but were poor and dropping out to work, had a teen pregnancy, or were sick. There were a few advanced students who just wanted to finish early but that was a minority. A lot of them just really wanted to get a real diploma ASAP to get better jobs.
1.) I grew up in a poor area. For high school they introduced an alternative school where you could come in whenever-- basically just rooms full of computers, you would take the whole lesson on the computer. They were able to use only a few teachers for a lot of students this way. While the courses themselves could use a little more work, overall it allowed people to finish high school that otherwise wouldn't have. I think the "let the computer do a lot of the teaching" method is a great one. Lets people work at their own pace and takes some pressure off the teachers.
2.) In an ideal world I would think you could buy a laptop and then save money on books, but at least here in the USA I don't usually see it done that way.
3.) Even if they're doing totally irrelevant stuff, knowing how to use a computer to search for answers and filter out bad information is a great skill to have. So while yes, they need to do their homework, I don't think it's awful if they also use it for playing on.