"Back in 2005, Becta--the body that advises the UK government on IT policy in education--issued a report which concluded that free and open source software could reduce the cost of deploying, supporting and maintaining computer systems in primary schools by between 20 and 50 per cent.
"Becta's report was the conclusion of a study of 48 schools over a period of three years, which compared 33 schools running traditional proprietary systems, against 15 that were running open source solutions.
"Cost is a major factor in determining IT policy for schools. Yet there has been little or no coordinated policy to encourage open source adoption at this level..."
