Dutch go for mandatory use open standards in education

5 to 10% of Dutch students are unable to receive or hand in their homework assignments, check their grades, communicate with teachers and fellow-students or cooperate in school projects. Why? Because many schools have chosen online solutions that require the use of Microsoft Silverlight, a proprietary closed-source web-technology. Parents and students who complain about this are told to buy and install Windows.

The Dutch government stipulated in 2007 that all public-sector institutions, including educational institutions, should use open standards in line with the comply-or-explain principle. Today, in 2011, the educational sector makes even less use of open standards than in 2007, while at the same time pushing and strengthening a Microsoft mono-culture that will have lasting effects for decades to come.

Parents, students and various organizations decided that the time has come to stop complaining and start pushing for stronger measures. This week an open letter was send to Parliament calling for a mandatory use of open standards in education and to ensure platform-independent access to all online educational solutions (regardless of device, operating system or browser). The online petition was signed over 300 times in the first three days.

The campaign will now focus on listing all educational institutions that force students to move to proprietary technology and provide a list of open standards-compliant alternatives.

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