The department at the French Ministry of Education that is handling purchasing of software and software licenses is increasing its Open Source offerings to some 1.5 million teachers and education workers in 250 institutes France.

France’s ministry for education has migrated 2,500 servers across its 30 local education authorities to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in line with the ministry's open-source investment strategy to avoid problems associated with vendor lock-in

The Polish Ministry of National Education is advising schools and universities to use Open Source software. The recommendation comes at the end of a volunteer campaign to help schools switch to Open Source.

In a press release from the Icelandic Ministry of Education the ministry explains it is working with the free software community to put free software into Icelandic schools. Two main reasons are given. Firstly, the Ministry’s agenda is to increase knowledge and competence among students in IT related subjects (using free software). Secondly, the ministry wants to cut costs.

Mandriva is working with the hardware manufacturer partner Positivo, to deliver this open source solution which will help teachers to improve students’ education. Also, this will be one of the world biggest organized deployment of Linux, with potential to get to 1.5 Million units, and confirms Linux as a key, cost-effective alternative PC operating system.

More teachers and institutions are now participating with organizations like SchoolForge, the Open Source Education Foundation, and Open Source Schools. These educators are beginning to see that the open source philosophy has the power to transform education in several key ways.

Greek advocates of free and open source software are warning that the Greek government is going to waste millions of euro on proprietary software licenses for the country's schools. They are calling on the Ministry of Education to cancel its latest procurement.

A decade ago, European countries leapt out of the gate to take the lead in the radical open source movement -- none more so than France -- and left U.S. developers in the proverbial dust. Through policies and high-profile projects, the French Republic for years has been advocating for all open source all the time, in government and education.

We are reaching an exciting time for Open Source in UK education as government interest is increasing and many teachers, support and management staff are using Open Source to greater effect in schools, colleges and universities.