Cape Town, 20 May 2003
The perceived lack of progress in distributing Microsoft`s software donation to SA schools may be partly due to the fact that many were not able to register via the Internet and no one really knows how many schools there are, says Microsoft.
The company has distributed its MS Office XP and MS Windows operating systems to about 670 schools as part of an initiative announced by President Thabo Mbeki in his opening of Parliament address last year.
An agreement between the Department of Education and Microsoft SA signed in May 2002 states the US software giant will supply free software to all of the country`s 32 000 state-run schools in perpetuity. The agreement also absolves any schools currently using pirated software, but it states that the software can only be used for educational purposes and may not be copied.
Following the signing of the national agreement, Microsoft SA also had to sign agreements with the nine provincial Departments of Education and the last one was completed in December last year.
However, the perceived lack of progress in distributing the software to schools has raised concerns among non-government organisations and parliamentarians, with speculation the software has been "warehoused" and that it was not getting to those for whom it was intended.
Brett Parker, Microsoft SA`s director of the Enterprise and Partner Group, says the registration forms had to be posted to many of the schools as they were unable to connect with the online registration form.
"We found the online process extremely slow and had to mail out self-addressed stamped envelopes to many of the schools to get their registration and their requirement," he says.
Parker says the process is fairly lengthy as each school`s requirements list and agreement forms have to be sent to Microsoft in Ireland for licence registration and once that is completed the software has to be sent to the school.
"We currently have about 4 827 schools registered and by the end of this week about 672 schools will have received their software," he says.
Just how many state schools are in existence and how many actually have PCs to run the software is open to question. The original Microsoft SA statement says there are about 32 000 schools, while Parker says only about 10 000 schools seem to be ready to qualify for the programme.
"Some of those schools are really quite small and hardly qualify for being called schools, but as the project moves along we will be able to get a clearer picture."
Parker says the value of the software to be sent to the 10 000 schools is estimated to be about R30 million, although the real cost to Microsoft will be much lower. The original press releases indicated that government would save up to R100 million with the donation.
Most of the schools` requests have centred on the Windows operating systems and the Microsoft productivity suites such as MS Office XP and MS Word.
"It seems they will be using the productivity suites to drive computer literacy," Parker says.
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