Becta, the UK government agency responsible for technology in the education sector has promised to do more to promote the use of open source software within schools and colleges and has warned educational institutions in the UK against upgrading to Windows Vista and Microsoft Office.

Becta has recently shown that it is unafraid of speaking out on behalf of schools. Unhappy with the value for money schools were getting regarding software licencing they first referred Microsoft to the government’s Office of Fair Trading then sent shock waves through schools when it issued its advice not to upgrade to Windows Vista or Office 2007.

While the rest of the world is shying away from Windows Vista and looking to deploy Linux across schools, the Victorian State Government in Australia is behaving like Microsoft's patsy by side-stepping competition and adopting Vista in schools, according to a leading local IT consultant

Officially sanctioned open source and free-to-use software could be in use across the UK education system within months after government education agency Becta issued a tender for a four-year framework agreement.

More than half of all U.S. government executives have rolled out open-source software at their agencies, and 71 percent believe their agency can benefit from open-source software, according to a survey.

"The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) is deploying Suse Linux Enterprise across 30,000 desktops and 1,880 servers in schools in southern India."

It's good to see news about continuing adoption of open source software in schools around the world. I've written before about how doable it would be for many American schools to reduce costs, increase efficiency and arm kids with Linux notebooks through open source adoption.

It's not just European government that's opting for open source. Today the NSA (the super-secret spy agency in the US) have announced they are joining in with OpenSolaris. Barton has an interview that explores this more. I think we'll see more and more government engagement as the adoption-led market takes hold.

Using Free software from open source communities makes perfect sense for governments, and not just for the obvious reasons of up-front savings on license fees.

MICROSOFT has suffered further set-backs in the UK education sector this week after Becta, the government procurement quango, reformed its purchasing regime to break the software giant's hold on education, and launched a programme to get schools to adopt open source software.