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From: | Ralph Janke |
Subject: | Re: [Fsfe-uk] Munich, swpat and Linux - possible in UK |
Date: | Tue, 17 Aug 2004 17:11:35 +0100 |
User-agent: | Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (Windows/20040207) |
Ian Lynch wrote:
I believe you probably mean the PLASC system. All schools have to report around February their information into the PLASC system. However, there are some other smaller, specialised systems as well in which information is exchanged.SIMS admin systems are a bit of a special case. The Government is supposed to be establishing a common format for all admin software through a sort of mega pupil record system but I haven't heard what progress there is at the moment. Its been in progress years. If we could get an open and standard file sturcture for the data it would go a long way to aleviating the SIMS monopoly. It would be best to campaign on behalf of may be 3 issues for open standards in education
I believe the format is open. I have not seen a spec yet, but I haven't looked for it either. The information is transfered via XML files. Therefore the format could always very easily be reverse engineered.
However the accounting is now also done between the CIty Council and the Schools via information exchange. I haven't looked into those yet.
As I understand MS is not coherent to OASIS. When will the government put pressure on the schools to move away from it ?The OASIS file format for productivity toolsThe exclusive use of open standards for web based learning A published and open data format and structure for reporting schoolsadministration infromation to LEAs and Central Government. Thes are difficult to argue against and would go a long way to opening things up to FLOSS.
I think Governors can first put pressures on Headteachers since they must approve among other things the budget of the school. One thing that should help is the opening of the IT costs for the schools. When the governors start to see that more than 50-60% of the annual budget is wasted in license fees for proprietory software and a solution of no license cost software would be available as an alternative, many Governors might start to ask questions and deny budgets with such waste. The Ministers can probably only be pressured in the long run through the Governors network...Everything helps. There is an incredible amount of ignorance in the DfES. I think simple messages about open systems and promoting fair competition might be a good angle with Governors since a lot won't really understand all the technical issues but they can understand simple concepts. eg MS have said they will only implement open file format standards if customers demand it. Wel the DfES is a big customer and it should be doing just that. Governors can put pressure on Ministers to do the right thing. The more angles it comes from the better.
Ralph Janke
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