No More Microsoft Office on New Zealand Classroom Macs

Classrooms in New Zeeland will be not be seeing Microsoft's Office on their Macs anymore. According to new software agreements for schools, All Macs will now be using other software such as iWork.

Under the new contract negotiated between vendors and the Ministry of Education, schools are no longer licensed to use Microsoft's popular Office suite. The change only applies to classroom computers, and The Ministry of Education is arranging for separate licensing of MS Office for Apple TELA laptops and administrative Macs. According to ministry ICT spokesman Douglas Harre, the change is simply a matter of value for money and should not have any serious impact since the majority of Macs in the classroom are in primary schools. "The average seven-year-old is not worried about programming macros in Excel," he says.

Dorothy Burt, e-learning leader at Auckland's Point England primary school, says the move makes little sense in terms of connectivity. "The ministry is constantly saying we should be moving towards connectivity between schools, but they're taking away from the Mac schools the software that the PC schools are using," she said. However, she agrees that the move will not have any major impact. "It's not so much of an issue in the classroom. We're using Google Docs, Google spreadsheet and other open-source software anyway. We did use Office in the classroom, [but only] because we had it."

ICT spokesman Douglas Harre estimates that there are about 25,000 Macs in schools. That will be affected by the change. "That's a ballpark figure. Schools aren't obliged to tell us what they buy," he added. "It is [the ministry's] responsibility to spend [the] millions of taxpayers' money in what we see as the most effective way."