Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

Back in July I posted on what I called, “the first shots in the Learning Platform Wars”. At the end of last year, Becta released the list of companies that made it through the framework. These can be found here. One company however, who did not apply for the framework, has reported Becta for allegedly breaching European regulations during the procedures. Crispin Weston, MD of Dorset-based Alpha Learning has officially complained to the European Commission and will hold a press conference on the Alpha Learning stand at BETT on Wednesday. He alleges that, “a significant number of the successful tenders fail to satisfy criteria which were described under the contract notice as mandatory”.

“Becta did not enforce its own mandatory requirements when it realised that no-one would meet them. While smaller companies and open source products have been effectively excluded from this competition, larger companies have been included even though they do not necessarily meet standards for interoperability.”

He goes further by saying:

“Becta has for many years failed to implement technical standards for interoperability for learning software in schools. The result has been an uncompetitive market with a poor record for innovation. The lack of support for these standards is also making it difficult for the BBC to meet the conditions under which it is required to operate the digital curriculum”.

Alpha Learning’s complaints can be found on their website.

I said back in July, “This is only the ‘phoney war’ in which propaganda is the main weapon, wait until the real one starts, then the casualties might be more than pride.” I think the real war is just about to begin!

Image credit: D B King

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