To an individual consumer perhaps, but schools need to buy hundreds at a time and the second-hand market isn't really great for that.
This is basically Apple taking a bite at the Chromebook market. Interested to see what reviewers have to say.
This is by design, who do you think the target market for this Macbook is?
This is very clearly targeted at Chromebooks in education, where the iPad is not doing too great:
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-apple-lost-the-k-12-educ...
At this price, a new device seems very tempting over dealing with a used hardware which is always a bit of a lottery.
Performance-wise A18 would be plenty for casual stuff. IIRC it's faster than M1.