Summary: The British schools system, misled by the Microsoft influence seeded inside BETCA, continues to misuse taxpayers' money to make Microsoft's monopoly stronger

WE HAVE been showing a lot of evidence recently of Microsoft's means for hijacking the education systems around the world (civil education and participatory training, not just academic or obligatory). We won't be writing about it again; instead, here are some previous posts that expose not only the way it works but extensive material on it (including leaked memos) as well:

1. Bill Gates Puts in a Million to Ratify His Role as Education Minister
2. How the Gates Foundation is Used to Ensure Children Become Microsoft Clients
3. More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
4. Microsoft Builds Coalitions of NGOs, Makes Political and Educational Changes
5. Microsoft's EDGI in India: Fighting GNU/Linux in Education
6. Microsoft's Gates Seeks More Monopolies
7. Gates Foundation Funds Blogs to Promote Its Party Line
8. Microsoft Bribes to Make Education Microsoft-based
9. Lobbyists Dodge the Law; Bill Gates Lobbies the US Education System with Another $10 Million
10. Gates Investments in Education Criticised; Monsanto (Gates-Backed) Corruption Revisited
11. Latest Vista 7 Failures and Microsoft Dumping

A new report from eWEEK Europe exposes what we already knew -- that Microsoft has got the British education system by the crotch.

Government Plugs Microsoft With Online Training Course

The government is promoting Microsoft's proprietary software as part of a plan to get more UK adults online, despite arguing for greater adoption of open source in the past

[...]

Some open source supporters may object to elements of the new scheme however as, although the Online Basics course is supposed to be an independent education project, the site contains a link to Microsoft's own learning network – Microsoft Digital Literacy – which includes guidance on how to use Microsoft products. In February 2009, the UK government said it intended to use open source to save €£600 million a year and published guidelines the that effect but, despite this, the UK lags badly at open source, using it less than countries like Mali, open source activists said at a meeting in September.

There is another new report in the British press, indicating perhaps the obvious once again. Guess who is behind it? It is Microsoft's puppet, BETCA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], which should be abolished. €£300 million (almost half a billion US dollars) of taxpayers' money is to be spent on indoctrinating people for Microsoft's benefit; "More than 12,000 grants were issued in last year's pilots of the scheme by Becta, the Government agency responsible for driving the use of IT in education," says the latter article. Let's not forget what else Microsoft has injected into British schools. ⬆

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

--Bill Gates