The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta), is not talking about the results of that review until it is published later today, but it has confirmed that it has extended its original three-year agreement with Microsoft by 12 months.

The extension has drawn criticism from open source advocates in the UK who believe that Becta is undermining its own research by not encouraging the adoption of open source alternatives.

We’d like to congratulate Becta for getting a discount on their season ticket for the Titanic, commented Mark Taylor, president of Open Source Consortium and chief executive officer at open source services firm SiriusIT Corp.

The review of Microsoft’s licensing and potential alternatives was announced in January 2006 in order to examine the potential for Microsoft Vista and Office 2007, as well as Microsoft’s subscription licensing models and the risks associated with non-perpetual licenses.

The review also considered the potential barriers to Microsoft alternatives following a May 2005 Becta report that had indicated that the use of Linux and OpenOffice.org could produce total cost savings of 44% per PC for primary schools and 24% for secondary schools, compared to standard commercial software PC configurations.

Despite those figures, Becta and the Department of Education have been accused of doing little to encourage the adoption of open source software. In November last year an early day motion was tabled in Parliament by Liberal Democrat MP for Southport, John Pugh, claiming that current policies are denying schools the benefits of open source software adoption.

The motion has subsequently been signed by a total of 108 MPs and also won the support of the Open Source Consortium.

Becta have never looked more out of contact with reality than they do today. Caught in a rising tide of criticism, all they are able to do is more of that same that has lead to the eight-year, £3bn ($5.8bn) money pit widely acknowledged to have had little impact on Education in the UK, added Taylor.

An exclusionist policy that limits ‘freedom-of-choice’ to a handful of Becta favourites, ignores market leader products such as [open source course management software] Moodle, and locks out open source when the rest of the industry is moving to it, is no policy at all, he continued.

Becta has rejected previous criticism of its stance on open source and in announcing the extended agreement with Microsoft maintained that there is no obligation for schools to use it.

There is of course no requirement under the MOU for schools to make use of Microsoft software or to change solutions that are already in place, stated Stephen Lucey, Becta executive director.

He also estimated that the understanding has saved UK schools £47m ($91m) since it came in to effect in January 2004

and welcomed the extension for a further 12 months: This extension will ensure that schools can continue to benefit from the discounts set out in the original MOU for a further 12 months.

At this stage it is not clear what will happen at the end of that 12 months, why Becta only chose to extend the agreement by a single year, or whether it will do more to encourage alternatives.

The agency declined a request to elaborate on its decision ahead of the publication of its review later today.