[Declaration of interest: the Open Source Schools project, for which I have the honour to act as community manager, is funded by Becta, although I've written the following in a purely personal capacity]
The Treasury announced this morning that Becta is to close as part of a package of some £670M education savings.
I, for one, would like to record my gratitude for all Becta have done to lead the adoption of technology in education over the last few years. Their interest in, and support for, open source software pre-dates my own: I have fond memories of attending an excellent 'expert technology seminar' chaired by Dr Malcolm Herbert, then one of the Becta team, now at RedHat, back in 2000 when I was head of maths and IT at a school in Oxford, just starting to experiment with Linux and setting up a Samba server. Despite others' comments on Twitter and in response to Rory Cellan-Jones' article, Becta have done much to encourage schools to explore open source, albeit in a way which maintained the level playing field that was part of Cabinet Office guidance, and subsequently the Conservative manifesto and the Coalition's Programme for Government.
Their balanced perspective provided a degree of authority to the important findings of their 2005 study of Total Cost of Ownership on the huge savings that schools could make through the use of open source software. Whilst the procurement model chosen for the learning platform services made it hard for Moodle service providers to make it onto the approved list, I have it on good authority that a Moodle/Elgg solution passed all the technical tests, and Moodle has been adopted by large scale deployments in Buckinghamshire, West Sussex, Cumbria and Lancashire and elsewhere; there's more about this in Ian Usher's excellent and perceptive post. Becta's support for open standards, most notably SIF, but in other areas too, such as interactive whiteboards, was necessary to enable open source to interoperate with closed, proprietary systems, even if the FLOSS community haven't always made the most of these chances. Open source was available through one of the other procurement schemes, when open source specialist Sirius made it onto the software framework agreement list. Becta's support, both financial and moral, for this community has been important, representing their willingness to grow a grass roots community of independently minded teachers and techies, as well as a way of sharing information and case studies about Open Source.
Becta have also documented open source successes, such as myself and three other Moodlers recognised in the ICT in Practice awards back in 2006, Buckinghamshire schools featured on the learning platform DVD and a number of schools using open source have received ICT Marks, including Paul Haigh's Notre Dame, which went on to win an ICT Excellence Award.
Looking ahead, Coalition support for open source appears clear, although the proof of the pudding will be in the tasting. The Programme for Government states:
"We will create a level playing field for opensource software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components."
The chancellor, George Osborne, when in opposition certainly seemed to 'get' open source, as he discussed at the RSA back in 2007 and in a Times article last year, seeing it as a way of making significant savings across government IT procurement. I suspect that as cuts begin to bite across the public sector, we'll see more and more schools turning to open source as a way of both saving money and delivering robust, innovative solutions. More significantly, open source fits in very closely with the ideal of the Big Society, as Osborne's 'open source politics' notion makes clear, with organic, flexible communities gathering together around a shared project which makes things better for themselves and for others:
Whilst I will miss Becta and wish my friends there success and happiness in their new ventures, the evolutionary changes in technology and society make it far easier for schools and teachers to support and challenge one another than was the case in 1998 when Becta came into being. Perhaps, though, we wouldn't now be ready for these changes if it wasn't for the difference that Becta had made.
I'm afraid I'd be a little more critical of Becta, Miles. Whilst, it's true, I haven't had a lot to do with the procurement side of things, they always seemed like a bit of a shape-shifting organization. Whilst they talked the talk, they didn't (especially on an individual level) always walk the walk. Becta often seemed from the outside like an organization driven by internal politics rather than outward-facing concern.
Given the amount of money they've had at their disposal, the impact they've had on UK schools is far too low. Schools have cried out for advice in a simple, easy-to-understand way. Unfortunately, Becta's publications have either been self-serving, or pitched too high or too low in terms of technical understanding.
It's a real shame. Becta should have worked as a concept. But we need to look forward to what's going to be possible in future. I hope that the connections individuals and groups can make more easily online leads to a system of trust that allows schools either individually or collectively to invest their money wisely in technology.
(Please note these are my personal views, not those of my employer)
Schools have cried out for advice in a simple, easy-to-understand way.
And that is where the problem lies, in an expectation that effective advice about managing/implementing ICT should be simple and easy-to-understand to people from a different background. One has only to look at the monumentally wasteful expenditures made on IT in all sectors to realise that actually implementing and managing a sustainable and effective ICT setup is a complex and specialised task.
Can you imagine someone from a group of IT technical specialists complaining that no one was giving them the "simple and easy-to-understand" advice about how to teach?
Becta's primary failings were the beginning point of having no teeth, the middle points of being overly risk-averse and trying to do research like academics rather than like companies, and the all the way through point of failing to recognise that what schools were mostly lacking was access to well-informed IS management professionals and therefore recruiting enough.
Bizarre that the BBC should get it's sole teaching quote from Eton, a school which would not be influenced by Becta policy anyway. And also odd that there is a reference to Malcolm Herbert in this context, because one of Malcolm's complaints was that everything he wrote was censored by the UK IT industry (no names, no pack drill) so that all references to open source were deleted.
The scene in which schools now find themselves is one in which not only Becta is missing. By and large the army of local authority IT advisers and support staff that were there when NGfL was introduced in 1998 have also gone. Like Becta, many of these will not be missed, but his leaves most schoolseven more dependent on the services of the RMs, Capitas, Sercos, and Ramyses that have done so much to promote the advantages of Open Source and flexibility at low cost. Capita shares are down today, but that's not because its dominance will weaken, that's because there will not be the cash to pay for its services.
I have to echo Doug's perspective. BECTA has been risk averse to the extent that it has brought about its own demise.
"There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction". John F Kennedy
Contrast schools' accountability with quantifiable targets linked to just about every bit of planning. SEF forms, Specialist Schools Applications, OFSTED etc. BECTA produced a glossy brochure as its development plan without a single quantifiable target and when I questioned Owen Lynch about it (Stephen Crowne's predecessor) his justification was the size of their budget. Incredible. BECTA presiding over curriculum on-line has held back progress, entrenching the desktop paradigm while it was obvious the world is moving to the Web. That is what is relevant to to-day's children. While Stephen Crowne says BECTA saves education more than its costs, it is just as easy to say it has cost education in addition to its cost. As with TCO, it's largely impossible to rationally quantify so it ends up being a political decision. Oh, the irony :-).
I have been campaigning with BECTA for at least 7 years on the FOSS front and from my perspective, BECTA were dragged kicking and screaming to finally putting a few hundred k into this and other open source projects while spending hundreds of millions on maintaining the status quo. I should think that I have personally put more money into open source than BECTA. Such conservatism is not the characteristic of an innovative organisation preparing schools for the future. It's an organisation waiting for other people to de-risk things so that when it is safe to go in the water they can dive in and take the credit claiming they are innovative. IWBs were around for a long time before BECTA started harping on about classrooms of the future
BECTA has some nice people, I have nothing personally against any of them, but the fact is that role cultures are not good at change and innovation - read any management book. This is why large companies set up skunk works operations. So if we are to save money I would rather it was from BECTA than a classroom teacher. Sadly it will probably have to be both.
(Please note these are the views of my employer - that is one of the good things about owning your own company :-) )
Becta did OK on the question of Open Source, they kind of reflected the reality of what was out there being used. On Sunday I downloaded all 152 downloadable publications from the Becta website (just in case) and there really are quite a lot of publications they can be proud of. The issue for me is that they seemed to be providing information but not leadership. I don't agree with the comentators in the peanut gallery that is twitter who are saying Becta never did anything, I just question whether they did enough to be worth the money. This is a question that is going to be answered over the next 5 years or so. What is more interesting to me right now is what takes it's place? What shape is the void and will it be filled by something central or by schools working together as a community? I do believe we live in interesting times.
I have been a staunch supporter of Becta ever since I first came across them in 2000 [1] but I am always happy to challenge them when they have not delivered the goods. However, it has felt that, over the last few days, there has been a school of sharks [2] circling round Becta like a dying beast.
There is no published timescale yet for teh closure, there is no roadmap for which sections of Becta's activities will be picked up by DforE or other agency or a clear guide to how technology will be funded in schools from next April yet either. It is almost too soon to tell how valued some of Becta's past and present activities have been to the present Government, other than by scrapping a NDGB there is a cost saving.
I still stand by my ground when I say that Becta has done and influenced a great many people and projects. I honestly do feel that due to some of the inspirational work early on I am standing on the shoulders of giants and I will still see the effects of more recent activities for Home Access, FITS, SRF and yes ... Open Source Schools for time to come.
Yes, Becta became a bureaucracy in many ways, as it had to due to more money being poored in as it took control over more projects ... normally with the ideal of joining up the good side of things. That does not fit with everyone and yes, some bad decisions were made.
Some of the deals that went on are a bt represented from my experience though. Becta were there to provide advice and guidance too ... but too many schools took the easy way out and either followed blindly or didn't engage at all. Without the teeth of OFSTED or similar there is little becta could do on that. Likewise some of teh objectives / projects were politically driven ... and in my opinion the only people I can point the finger at and snarl at are the politicians and the lawyers, the latter for not fighting hard enough at times and the former for takign the easy way out on some tough decisions.
I already know that my stance on using Microsoft and Apple products is not popular amongst some here but we have lots of schools using MS products ... and as such Becta had a requirement to get the best deal for those schools. Do I think it was Becta's job to force schools to change away from MS products? No ... but then again I thounk we should use MS products ... as well as OSS ... and Apple products ... and even RiscOS.
Becta's stance and work on Open Standards has also been vitally important, and I worry now that SIF will drift. Without open standards OSS does not stand a chance.
Do I think that a large chunk of Becta will be taken up by other groups? Of course I do ... we already have TeachMeets in the picture, the ICT Register with the tag line of 'by schools ... for schools', EduGeek looking to keep the technical independence of schools going ...
However, who will have the job of trying to link things together in a coherent manner. PLNs on twitter will not do it all. And I worry that open Source Schools will become insular and not look outside of the OSS fold for ideas.
Tony
\My views ... I would probably say the same if you rang up my employer though\
[1] I only started working in schools in 1999 ... I know ... Newbie!
[2] Pun intended ... I could have used 'a shiver of sharks' instead.
-- In general, my opinions, based on my experience and not a reflection on my employer or any other groups I am associated with *unless explicitly mentioned*.
I'm sure we've had this debate somewhere before...
I couldn't agree more that open standards are the bedrock, and not because it gives open source a chance, but because it gives genuine competition a chance. And it is an area where schools, councils and central government alike have been incredibly ineffective. I find this helps: http://xkcd.com/743/
And I sort of agree that schools should have the right to use any software/hardware they like to achieve the objectives. So long as the software and hardware are best value. I'll make a direct and defendable claim right now: nothing done with ICT in schools over the last 10 years could not have been done using open source solutions, solutions which would have cost less, been more inclusive and more sustainable. Ergo, schools expenditure on ICT has not been best value.
Strong, but fair
Perhaps this is not the time to criticise BECTA but take up the challenge of focussing work in schools by schools. The idea floated here of having practical turnkey solutions to problems in a wiki format is one key advance I am waiting to use.
A bit too much in these forums is about railing against MS & industry etc rather than doing something practical. This is not a lot different from the approach of BSF and their consultants of endlessly banging on (at great expense) about risk, procurement and contracts.
I for one will be sorry to see Becta go. Most of what they did seemed pretty good to me, cf ICT Mark, FITS, and some of the procurement stuff (even though LP frameworks do not seem to be understood by LAs in general).
Yesterday a spokesperson for Becta gave away what was a weakness. In the context of praising what they had achieved the spokesman included the phrase
... if we go back to allowing schools.... (my emphasis)
the idea that quangos in general and PFS/LAs/Becta/Consultants in particular should be thinking that they allow schools to do things is one key problem we might be escaping from in the Open Source Community.
The big question is value for money. The things people name as good coming from BECTA such as FITS and ICT Mark (wasn't that NAACE, an organisation that costs the tax payer nothing?) are very expensive developments if they are put against BECTA's running costs. BECTA's own research showed the possibility of saving large amounts of money through the adoption of FOSS yet virtually nothing was done about it. I frequently go into schools and talk to ICT teachers. Very few have any real understanding of what BECTA does. BECTA seems more relevant at a LA level in providing a bureaucratic lead in the control systems handed down from central government and provided a convenient distancing of politicians from the effect of decisions. Not very democratic as it effectively reduces political accountability. As for the LP frameworks, are we really any better of because of them? Are all schools routinely using LPs because of this expensive work? I don't see much evidence of it. In general the schools that are advanced with LPs are often Moodle users who have done it in spite of rather than because of the system.
As for doing something practical, I have set up a new Awarding Body specialising in educating learners about Open Systems. I see many FOSS people putting their own time and resources into trying to improve things. Inevitably there will be some disquiet about the entrenched structures and vested interests that make change difficult.
Didn’t Becta get it wrong over Moodle?
I have not got a strong schools background so I don’t find it easy to judge how much help and how effective Becta has been in schools. I am sure they have done a lot of good over the years and there are so many aspects to their work that it would be foolish to make a blanket judgement.
Towards the end of the government initiatives around ICT Skills for Life nobody seemed to know what to do with it, and how to pull the pieces together. So the buck was passed to Becta, who appeared to be keen to control and standardise everything. There were a couple of conferences where the good and mighty were wheeled in and great deal was spent on the venue, the technological facilities and the facilitators. But the key messages weren’t taken up, indeed the plot was lost and there were no reports published, that I recall, and the ICT Skill for Life ship was left to drift further out to sea.
I read an article in the paper yesterday about the attempt to force the digital radio takeover and the following could also apply to Becta:
“planning like this frequently fails. The most successful technological switches of recent years have been unexpected, and shaped by users not states: the accidental global addiction to text messaging, a feature built into mobile networks as an engineers' afterthought; or the invention of the world wide web by scientists as a way of sharing data at the Cern laboratory in Switzerland; or the universal adoption of home Wi-Fi.
By contrast, digital radio is modernisation imposed from above, a project in search of a purpose and popular demand: a 21st-century version of the east African groundnut scheme”.
And so on, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/23/digital-switchover-car-radio
Becta have always, to be fair, talked about harnessing the technology, and putting learning first. That is in theory. In practice have not the attempts to harness the technology led to us being harnessed by this?
I enjoyed my time at Becta and in particular the chance to develop ideas on open source for education. I thought that given its adoption in Higher Education, that Schools and Colleges were the next step; wrong. With exceptions like K12Linux and LTSP, the power of the commercial providers and lack of skilled resources in schools, made OSS adoption more difficult.
Since I left Becta in 2000, I spent less time working with education and been more of a generalist, and help steer Red Hat to becoming the most successful open source company. Becta have become more OSS friendly when I was there* though whilst supporting OSS initiatives, most of the money and frameworks have gone to proprietary companies as the entry barriers were too high for small providers and technology companies.
The one thing that did cross my mind recently was had the NGFL been running now, it would be a 'community' and not a centralised service; wish I'd had the foresight back in 1998, but hey, thats why I wasn't a dotcom millionaire.
Malcolm
* I'm not going to recount all of the tales of big company intervention whilst I was at Becta, though it was nice to get character assignation emails from a couple of larger organisation. I have kept a couple of the better ones.
Malcolm
We think you meant character assassination. You can't trust that voice to text software.
Two years ago I had a visit from three BECTA employees, two of whom were quite senior. At that time we were providing all the ICT infrastructure and curriculum ICT teaching from 11 to 18 with Linux thin clients. Our MIS was also built on open source software. ie. We were a successful school completely run on open source software and the ICT department was in the top 5 subjects at AS and A2 according to the Good Schools Guide. We also had second specialism in computing on a bid based totally on open source. So perfect for BECTA to use as a model of how open source software could save money and bring success to a school, if they were serious about promoting open source software.
While these people were with us I got the feeling that they were paying lip service to what we were doing and indeed they couldn't wait to get out, and looked bored throughout. Anyway away they went.
I did not get so much as a thank you email, not to speak of anything further like 'Well done'. No case study appeared on their website and any search for our school on the site has never returned any results. The visit and any record of it vanished into total obscurity/denial.
An opportunity to at least show how one school was doing open source was never taken up. So if you ask me about their commitment to open source, from my personal experience it never existed past needing to be seen to be doing something. If you ask me if I am sad at their demise, for their employees, yes, for their work definitely no. I also believe that they have had a detrimental effect on the development and growth of small open source IT companies in the UK.
Id like to hear more about the whole schoole stragety as the colleg where i work wants to adopt OS software options, Im a keen adviocate already and I could do with some quantifiable information to dissimate to other staff about costs and benefits of moving to OS software rather than MS office et al
I would appreciate any details you are able to offer me by email about how to appraoch this with everyone.
Tis a shame becta gone but if they could not help drive postive change from ground up and assist with adoption and implementation of open code and software then so be it ...
thanks for an intresting group of comments and points everyone
Oddly, in public sector bodies the quantifiable benefit of a ground-up open source solution is probably not that large, relative to the costs of the body as a whole. That particular reason to choose open source is stronger in the private sector where they pay far more per user for their software licences.
Don't get me wrong, it is easy enough to quantify the amount of money that could be redirected in more beneficial ways for the public body: look at the software licences currently being purchased and add them up, not forgetting to take £40 or so off the cost of all your computer purchases; this is the money that will be available for expenditure in other ways in the future.
But the best reasons for changing are more strategic and about adding value. I could go on at length as I have here (for charities in general): http://blogs.thehumanjourney.net/whynot/entry/13 and here (for public sector bodies): http://putt1ck.ukgovoss.org/2010/01/26/adding-value-for-free/ - but the short message for education is open source solutions tend to increase choice, are more sustainable and more inclusive. And no one from the Welsh Assembly paid for all those Cymreag versions of open source software!
This thread is behaving oddly, only when I choose to reply does it cease to be threaded as Becta Closure
If I remember correctly this site and associated activities was funded by Becta, as per this post in the regsiter.
Is the continuation of this site and associated activities dependent on the Becta funding?
Are there any public documents on the outcomes of the funding (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/13/becta_open_source_schools/) and what was to happen next?
AlphaPlus, who manage this project for Becta, have every intention of the community continuing beyond the initial two year timescale of the project, and are in discucssion with Becta as to the exact form of such a continuation.
Our feeling is that the community is sustainable, and we are grateful to those members who have contacted us directly to express support and offer hosting after Becta's closure was announced. It is our hope that the spirit of contribution and support which characterises open source software development will encourage members to take a greater share in the responsibilities of maintaining website content and event organization, although both Miles and I firmly expect to continue our involvement in the community beyond the end of Becta's funding, in some form or another.
We'll post further details once the position is clearer.
Anne Matthews,
Open Source Schools Project Manager.