DfES-MS Sponsorship 1
From Schoolforge-UK
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To:
Head of Unit, Specialist Schools Designation Team
DfES, 2F Area E, Mowden Hall, Staindrop Road, Darlington DL3 9BG
Christine Crossen
16th Floor West, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP
Dear
It has come to my notice that sponsorship from Microsoft has now been accepted as eligible for Specialist School Status. The principles of specialist schools sponsorship have always been that:
a) There should be no commercial interest in sponsorship;
b) the value of the sponsorship can be commercially verified against the usual prices in the market place; and
c) if sponsorship is in kind, the sponsor will not supply the school during the life time of the project.
It is clear Microsoft sponsorship violates all three of these principles.
Firstly, having a Microsoft consultant advising the school on its IT strategy is entirely inappropriate. BECTA will report later this month that schools can save millions by adopting open source software. A Microsoft consultant is highly unlikely to devise an IT strategy based on these findings, i.e. on best value principles. Additionally, in all other cases consultancy is expressly declared as ineligible as sponsorship
Secondly, the huge majority of schools that are applying for designation and that have Microsoft as a potential sponsor already have most of the software titles listed as being sponsorship in kind. How then is the sponsorship being valued? If a school is on Microsoft Schools Agreement they have already paid for the licenses and the sponsorship is effectively worthless. Even schools not on Schools Agreement will have most of the titles cited as sponsorship, and furthermore probably have many computers incapable of running the most recent versions, which are therefore of no value.
Thirdly, if the school buys any PC from mainstream suppliers, it will come with a Microsoft operating system on it, so the school would be making purchases from the sponsor throughout the period as a specialist school. If the MS consultant advise the school along a Microsoft based strategy, then Microsoft sell their products to the school.
Software licensing is a minefield of complexity and few people understand it. Even if the Department fully appreciates the implications of this sponsorship deal, I urge you to allow all software suppliers to compete on an even footing. This should include Open Source suppliers. Since the value of Open Source software is not predicated on license costs, I believe that you need to allow support and consultancy costs for Open Source software to be eligible, and thus you need to waive the rules on future supply as you have done for Microsoft. The alternative is to revert to the status quo where no software is eligible.
Signed
