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On 24/05/10 12:05, Paul Sutton wrote: > Gordon Henderson wrote: > >> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/24/becta_cut/ > >> From that article: > >>> Schools are expected to get more control over their technology >>> purchases as a result. > >> And: > >>> While in opposition Osborne himself suggested wider adoption of open >>> source software could slash school IT spending by half. > >> Sounds good to me! > >> Gordon > > Sounds good, did they ever do anything useful anyway ? > > Paul > It depends on you point of view. BECTA did negotiate a lower license fee for schools some time back. It may have done Microsoft based schools a favor ... but it set back open source because it gave Microsoft another crow bar to use to worm their way into schools with smaller budgets and gobble it all up. The one thing that BECTA (i believe) got right, was that they did identify that there would need to be a better support structure before open source could make any inroads into schools. I think that problem still exists + teacher inertia towards anything "new". Get the teacher training colleges teaching open source, or at least how open source can be integrated into the classroom and then at least some of the problem will be solved. Until then, its going to be a frustrating haul up the learning curve. Perhaps with BECTA gone Microsoft will pick off schools one by one again. Good or Bad ... I don't know ? Good if the schools go running to FLOSS but Bad if even more of the school budget has to go to the Microsoft "protection" scheme. Tom. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html