PR releases

Guest editorial: "Why teach our young dogs old tricks?" - Vista and schools

By David Cooper, RW Communications
With students being asked to consider their options for the start of the GCSEs in September, I’m hoping that a good number will pick IT related subjects and become RW Communications’ staff and customers of the future.

However, following news at the beginning of the year that the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) has rejected requests for investment to upgrade our school’s operating systems, there is some concern over how relevant any such qualifications would be in real-world applications.

BECTA published a report in January indicating serious concerns over the capabilities of school’s current IT systems to successfully install and run Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista. BECTA also raised concerns (along with many businesses) about the backwards-compatibility of Office 2007’s Open XML file format. It was therefore decided that the anticipated £175 million cost of implementing Vista in British schools could not be justified.

It is fair to say that most new operating systems are slow to be adopted as each comes with its own new set of bugs and compatibility issues, but is BECTA right to hold kids back from using software that is widely used in business based on a cost decision? Vista is likely to be one of the more widely used operating systems by the time today’s batch of pupils leave school and enter the workplace. Should we be concerned that our future workforce won’t be formally educated using the most widespread platform available?

I can sympathise with BECTA. It is probably no exaggeration that the upgrades would cost £175m and there are a number of possible causes for this high price. The cost is unlikely to be down just to licensing; a high percentage of the cost will go towards paying for qualified engineers to go through the installation process. Any additional, supportive hardware that must be ordered is likely to be highly expensive.

There is a widespread feeling that cost should not be a leading factor in deciding our childrens’ education. You can also argue that pupils need the latest software to be prepared for work. But there is a financial reality which can’t be ignored. In the past, Open Source alternatives have been posited as a cheap and widely-compatible alternative to Windows in schools, but these solutions are not widely used in business and will ultimately be less helpful than working on out-dated operating systems.

However there is often a ‘third way’. My team was recently involved in a project with a school to install a new computer system. As with any school, it had a limited budget and had originally asked us to install an open source operating system. However, during the consultation process with the school, we were able to offer a more suitable option - to give the OS a Microsoft Desktop and the look-and-feel of Windows, which we then locked down with group policies. In this way the pupils can learn to use a recognisable standard, which will help them in later life, without pushing the budget through the roof.

BECTA is probably right to have some concerns regarding the compatibility and interoperability of the Vista package, particularly with word processing and other Office software. Businesses can afford to provide its workers with computer software that is compatible with most operating systems. Schools do not have the luxury of supplying such equipment to pupils.

It’s true that each school’s computers will generally run the same operating system throughout as they are given discounted multiple educational licenses. But children today rely on being able to email documents to themselves to complete at home or on the move. This makes cross-compatibility all the more important. Some of these children will be running earlier versions of Windows at home, some will use Macs, some will use versions of Unix.

If schools don’t offer a system that is compatible with most programs they will cause a raft of problems for their pupils. Although, perhaps you could argue that getting around these compatibility problems would be an education in its own right.