Why should schools even consider using windows when there is a cheaper, even free alternative? I'm not even a linux user, but i stil have to wonder about this.
When i was in secondary school the entire IT department was a network of 30 or so acorns (primary school it was all bbc's, i did get to use the shiny new Amiga too. for a few weeks anyway, before it was stolen!). Did anybody actually own an acorn outside of a school? No (nobody really had pc's either), but did that cripple my IT skills? As a software developer i'd have to say, probably not.
The whole purpose of a school IT department is to teach kids IT, if you're teaching IT anyway, then why do you need to do something the kids have done before (if you can find me a class of secondary school kids where more than 10-15% don't know how to use word on a windows pc i'd be impressed). The 'people use windows in businesses' argument doesn't hold water either.
If you're teaching IT principles then separating them from any one implementation is a good thing, IT principles are not operating system, or application, specific so it shouldn't matter what system you are taught on. the kids should be taught the difference between ASCII and UNICODE, how memory and disk storage work, etc, even teaching the difference between .doc and .odt is a good thing. but you don't actually need to touch a computer to do any of these, nevermind use a specific OS or office suite
If you're just teaching basic computing skills, ie word processing or spreadsheets, there is no difference whatsoever between openoffice and ms office. How to select and apply formatting is the same, how to save and load, insert pictures, and so on. In fact you'd be far better off teaching people how to find the option they need rather than the tick list approach that was used when i was in school
(as an example, make text superscript)
to change the appearance of a piece of text, you need to find the text formatting options. on the system we are using these are here. Some systems allow you to set up shortcuts to this sort of formatting, for example Microsoft word has a quick icon for making text superscript at the top of the screen that you can just click on.
rather than just, select the text you want and click on the superscript button at the top of the screen.
It just boggles the mind that the, universally tight fisted, education department would even consider windows/office over any number of free/cheaper alternatives, when not only is there no appreciable difference, but actually exposing kids to something they've never used before might do them some good.