A study on free software in British schools

There have been a number of stories recently about the adoption of free software in public school systems around the world. Certainly free software has a lot of attributes which make it well suited for that role: it is relatively secure, open to curious minds which wish to look inside it, freely available for students to copy and use at home, easily adapted to local languages, and easier on a school's (typically stretched) budget. Of course, not everybody agrees that the use of free software is cheaper; certain proprietary software companies, in particular, are trying to cast doubt on that assertion. So the administration of a school contemplating a switch to free software might well wonder: will it truly save money?

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency decided that it needed an answer to that question. So it took a detailed look at 48 British schools - 33 which were not using free software, and 15 which were - to get a sense for their relative costs. The result of this work is now available as a glossy report [PDF], suitable for printing on heavy paper and handing to a school administrator near you.

The study divided software usage into three broad categories: (1) servers, (2) class and administrative computer operating systems, and (3) classroom and administrative applications. The total costs were summarized in each category, taking a broad view. Costs include hardware and software, but also support - both purchased from outside and provided by internal staff. Training was also included. In other words, the study took into account all of those factors which, according to the critics, make free software more expensive than the proprietary alternatives.

The bottom-line result is quite clear:

Unsurprisingly, the study found that the best immediate results came from the use of free software on server systems. There are more obstacles to deployments on administrative and classroom systems. In some cases - especially for school administrative functions - the necessary applications are not yet available (the study notes that projects like SchoolTool are working to provide those applications). There is also some opposition to free applications from people who are trained in other packages. Tellingly, most of this opposition seems to come from the teachers, not the students:

Teachers and administrators, like most adults, have a certain tendency to get set in their ways and stick with what they already know. Children can be more flexible. What these schools are seeing corresponds with your editor's own experience: children have no problem working with free software, and, if exposed to it, will take to it readily. Just don't (speaking from experience here, again) expose your children to Battle For Wesnoth, or their homework will suffer.

In summary: this report is a good thing, as far as it goes. The flood of hostile "total cost of ownership" studies is unlikely to slow in the near future, so it is good to have contrary evidence from relatively unbiased sources. There are, however, no end of reasons, beyond the financial ones, for using free software in public schools, but this report ignores them almost completely. At the lower school levels, free software can be made available to students without licensing hassles or sanctimonious lectures about not making copies. At higher levels it can teach the students much about software itself, encourage them to experiment, and demonstrate how cooperative work can yield benefits for everybody involved. A strict focus on costs may provide a favorable picture, but risks creating the impression that cost is the only reason for using free software. In the context of the public schools, more than in many other situations, it is important that people understand that there is far more to free software than "free of cost."

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