I think it has as much, or more, to do with the culture surrounding the Raspberry Pi foundation as it does with the price point.
Perhaps when the Raspberry Pi Foundation has an Education Strategy I'll be more supportive of such awards. Until then, talk of helping youngsters learn to program is twaddle.
The new school term is about to start and still no 'Education Packs' available, or even planned. They're happy enough to sit back and take the dollars from people running HTPCs instead.
Let's see what the last update was. April 2012:
The Foundation is currently scrambling to gets its education pack ready by the time units are ready for the classroom.
Uh-huh.