Do you have preference for physical size, screen size or brightness or other physical attributes?

iPad cases are available in a wide variety of materials and features including cases with drop protection (especially corner padding). Handles and grip strap features I expect are also possible.

I will mention that iPad camera image quality trails behind iPhone cameras, so some model iPads have notably less bad cameras than other models.

Apple did/does promote iPads for bulk educational deployment. I think there are several sources of charging racks, software apps for device deployment, tracking, device update management, etc.

We use two iPad Pro daily and have found that around year three the charge port (USB-C) will become worn enough to sometimes charge slowly or intermittently. The tiny contacts inside the charge port seem to be the wear factor. Each of our iPads may be unplugged and re-plugged multiple times each day.

The deprecated Lightning charge ports on older iPad models seemed to last at least as long as USB-C, perhaps longer. The cable Lightning ends would develop problems so we just replaced the cables whenever one become suspect.