[Sussex] Linux in schools

[Derek Harding]

This wisdom was penned by "The ol' tealeg" <tealeg at member.fsf.org> on
Sun, 12 Jan 2003 21:33:54 +0000:

> Chaps
> 
> does anyone know anything about promoting Linux in the british
> educational system.

I worked at a local secondary/sixth form school as network manager with some teaching activities for two years until the end of 2001. In that time I had immense difficulty, not persuading the establishment of the value of Linux, but in persuading them it was "real life". I even had problems putting OpenOffice.org into use. Students were no problem and my sixth-form class combined with their business studies work and produced a business plan to move to OpenOffice.org throughout the entire environment (including admin) and using LTSP in those environments where M$ programmes were not important teaching aids. Sadly, that meant business studies, music, media studies and "art" only.

The school, in spite of the study, was not even prepared to discuss a change. All the school admin uses SIMS from Capita, who nearly have a monopoly even though they are not in line with government spec. (open standards for file interchange etc.). Also, there is a perception that OOo is substandard (though Star Office could change that) and that Linux is not a system that "they" (students) will meet in the "real world". There is recognition that Linux has a place in the entwork (we were Novell/Linux only to start with) but LEA pressures forced our school to get an NT server specifically for the purpose of running the SIMS database (on a Borland engine of some sort - I forget).

The then head of IT studies refused to support the move to more widespread use of Linux because it failed to sport an IDE to match VBasic (?!?) and it failed to offer an easy-to-use database like Access. Kylix and mySQL and so on failed to change the mindset.

I have kept in touch with the school and, although the new head of IT studies is willing, he is of a lower level of understanding than the good sixth-formers. The old head of IT is now responsible for the network and sees Novell thin-client as the way ahead because it still allows a M$ desktop - frankly he is beyond education.

Last week I visited the BETT exhibition, IT in education, at Olympia. Neither Red Hat nor SuSE - the two largest educational support enterprises in Linux, were not present and RH have missed the last 3. So Linux has moved out of the educational promoters. However, Spyderworks were present and they promote SAMBA servers though without overt declaration of the Linux-word!

There are a couple of schools really into Linux, one in Essex which is a fee-paying school and is entirely freeBSD and thin client, the other, in Dorset, is 90/10 Linux/M$ with the M$ solely for admin (that **** SIMS again). The Welsh education authorities are supportive of Open Source in schools as are (I think) Merseyside and Lancs. Sadly, my old school has gone from 2xNovell 4xLinux 1xM$ servers to 3xNovell, 1xLinux 1xM$ - the third Novell taking the place (partially) of the missing Linux boxes.

Most public sector schols lack the IT savvy staff in IT and lack understanding of the issues in the admin sector. Linux is a turn-off word and lower licence costs become lost in the process. Many schools rely on LEA support for their IT and don't have their own senior network staff - lower grades only ever having met M$ don't conceive anything else.

In fact, I was thinking of approaching the national LUGs with a view to taking a stand at next-years BETT to demonstrate LTSP and the existing wealth of material for education. If someone cracked the Capita SIMS dominance (and ALICE for the libraries!), the decision for schools would be easier.

In France there is a big move in the public sector schools to adopt Linux and Open Source, and in the catholic school sector, this trend is beginning. Much of this is due to the work of a couple of universities, particularly Angers (my main area of knowledge) where they were responsible for turning OOo into a francophone product. The EU is promoting Open Source solutions very strongly and, except the UK, to an extent Holland, and, surprisingly, Finland/Norway, the EU governments are behind this move, too. That's why the company I work for is Franch and we have government and EU money to support our development of products to operate on Open Source platforms.

I could go on for ages - but I'll stop here!
-- 
Best wishes,
Derek