It's true, free open source software can and will save schools a small fortune. But why schools in particular?

The first thing to get clear in your mind is that I am not talking about simply replacing expensive proprietary software with free open source equivalents. Sure this measure alone saves money and when you are talking about server software it can be a lot of money. However what distinguishes schools is a model of computing that has created an unsustainable money eating monster.

Free, open Source software will allow schools to move to a model that will not only save money but will allow more students access toICT. Below is how this can be achieved.

Known unknowns

To use the terminology of a less than great former US Secretary of Defence, there are "Known unknowns" which we can attribute a relatively accurate value to, and thus suggest solutions. Every year UK Schools spend in excess of £50 million on the electricity needed to power their ICT facilities; somewhere in the region of half a million pounds on proprietary licences for the software they run and goodness knows how much on the 3 billion printouts and photocopies they generate (actually it's about £30,000 per million prints so this would be another £90 million pounds). The grand total is about a £150 million every year.

Printouts and photocopies appear in the figure because the current schools computing paradigm and this cost are closely linked. This is because 'word processing with pictures' (desktop publishing in school jargon) have enabled teachers to produce worksheets. Apparently harmless enough, these now utterly dominate teaching practice. With the aid of photocopiers (aka laser printers) these worksheets have been and are now handed out to children in their billions.

Unknown unknowns

Unknown unknowns" are more tricky. ICT capital spending in education is traditionally treated as a one time process, viz the costly BSF (Building Schools for the Future ICT budget). In this process the money is put aside to buy infrastructure hardware and software. The real cost of any capital spend however must include the five year upgrade cycle for hardware and software, increasing support and disposal costs. These are so intimidating that few financial managers or Governments want to think about it let alone put a figure to it.

So we must leave to one side the enormous un-quantified downstream costs of capital spending on schools ICT and focus on the year-on-year 'utility' costs. To reduce these we can do the following simple things:

• Stop using expensive software and use free software instead. Free, open source software such as Linux is, of course, just that - free. OSS is increasingly a 'shoe-in' for most of the expensively licenced proprietary software used in schools. Open Source software is uniquely able to use low energy consuming hardware. For example Linux desktop computers can use one tenth of the power of Vista PC. Linux mini-notebooks (small laptops) typically use one tenth the power of a Windows Vista laptop and cost between £100 and £200. Low power means low heat production, so schools can turn of the air-conditioning now required simply to deal with the heat produced by hundreds of PCs.
• Use a VLE for all teaching resources. Open Source VLE Moodle is free software but this is immaterial compared with the main potential benefit of a VLE which is providing a web-based unified interface to access electronically held resources. Once students have personal low cost wirelessinternet-enabled devices they can access these resources and will not need the endless printouts. The new £100-£200 Linux netbooks are the obvious choice.

By solving the "Known Unknowns" UK schools could save £100 million per year. This alone will buy every child a netbook in the first year.

Tackling the "Unknown unknowns" will result is even bigger savings because the ICT model in schools would shift from huge capital expenditure projects where vast numbers of desktops PCs are procured and used to fill shinyICT facilities thereby creating that most uniquely bizzarre scene in school ICT; massively overpowered PCs acting as room heaters cooled by expensive air conditioning.

The savings here added to the savings above over one replacement cycle of 5 years would save the taxpayer billions as the blog title asserts.

By the way, this is no pipe dream reserved for whacky iconoclastic openistas, schools in Italy are already using the above model (according to the BBC news so it must be true) and the UK's biggest ICT vendors Viglen and RM have produced their own concept versions and are ready to go with them. RM even has its own mini-notebook the Asus EeePC.

Schools want to change, they feel trapped in ICT models and agreements they wish would simply go away. The BSF program, the 'refresh' programs and the 'outsource service agreements' all conspire to spend their money for them on an expensive outdated paradigm.

Maybe a recession is just what is needed, when the money runs out you have to start to think a bit smarter.