Government is shutting out Open Source Software for Schools

Current government policy as outlined by the DfES and BECTA (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) favours the implementation of proprietary software from a small number of vendors. This is despite BECTA's own evidence suggesting schools can save up to 60% on ICT by switching to Open Source.

Liberal Democrat MP Dr John Pugh, a former teacher, is so concerned about this move by the government that he has tabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons to highlight this fact. Details of the EDM together with a list of the MPs who have supported the motion can be found here.

As John Pugh MP explained “The Moodle Virtual Learning Environment illustrates this issue well.  Moodle is currently unacceptable in the Becta framework for learning platforms, but has been adopted by more than half the Further Education Colleges in the UK and by the Open University. Around a million teachers worldwide are members of the Moodle community with its take-up growing fast.  Surely that many teachers cannot all be wrong ?”

BECTA ICT in Practice Award Winner and Headteacher Miles Berry, said "It seems bizarre that open source software that delivers exactly the sort of personal learning space that teachers want for their pupils could be overlooked in favour of institutional learning platforms on which precious few schools, teachers or pupils have been consulted."

The Open Schools Alliance is asking all MPs to support John Pugh's Early Day Motion, “Software in Schools”.

About the Open Schools Alliance

The Open Schools Alliance is an umbrella organisation bringing together companies, organisations and individuals concerned about ICT in UK education. These include the Open Source Consortium (representing OSS-focused IT companies), SchoolForge-UK (representing educationalists), FFII UK (central to the recent campaign against software patents) and UKUUG (representing over a thousand IT experts across the country).

The Open Schools Alliance exists to promote the greater use of Free and Open Source Software and open standards in UK education.
For more information, see http://www.openschoolsalliance.org

About Open Source Software and Open Standards

Open source is a process which enables SMEs and large organisations to contribute to reusable high quality, reusable software, by deploying this software with open, often internationally approved standards, companies can cooperate on technology and compete on service,  Users benefit because they can choose where to obtain this software free or with support, and with open standards they retain control of their data.  The process prevents lock-in, so users never have to pay to upgrade, merely because the producers have released a new version of a product with different formats.

See for example
http://www.gnu.org, http://www.opensource.org

EARLY DAY MOTION 179

SOFTWARE IN SCHOOLS  21.11.2006
Pugh, John
That this House congratulates the Open University and other schools, colleges and universities for utilising free and open source software to deliver cost-effective educational benefit not just for their own institutions but also the wider community; and expresses concern that Becta and the Department for Education and Skills, through the use of outdated purchasing frameworks, are effectively denying schools the option of benefiting from both free and open source software and the value and experience small and medium ICT companies could bring to the schools market.