Microsoft says it wants as many people as possible to benefit from its technology at the best possible price. Information and communication technology (ICT) is an essential subject in schools, which have to spend huge sums on installing, upgrading and maintaining equipment and software. The outstanding issues centre on the limitations Microsoft places on schools using its subscription licensing arrangements, the agency says.
Becta's advice to schools considering moving to Microsoft's School Agreement subscription licensing model is that they should not do so. It reminds schools they are legally obliged to have licensed software, but suggests they use instead what is known as "perpetual licensing". This gives the permanent right to use the software and requires no ongoing payments beyond the purchase price.
The advantage to schools in using a subscription service such as Microsoft's is that smaller, annual payments are involved rather than a larger one-off cost. But a spokesman for Becta said the problem was that Microsoft required schools to have licences for every PC in a school that might use its software, whether they were actually doing so or running something else.
