Schools are normally pretty good at letting parents know when this is available as part of the welcome pack, but it’s certainly worth asking if not. Only if the school is part of the Office 365 Education E5 programme are pupils allowed to download the five free installations of Office. The most basic package only permits students to access the online versions of the Office apps, which anyone can already do as long as they have a free Microsoft account (such as an old Hotmail or email address). Whether or not your child is eligible to download a free copy of Microsoft Office depends on the subscription package the school has signed up to. Although quite how anyone would be able to detect such usage is open to debate… How to get your free copy of Microsoft Office (The school normally pays the subscription fee, not the pupil.) That means there’s nothing stopping you from downloading a copy of Office onto all of your home computers, provided you’re not using it for business purposes, which would break the licensing conditions. As part of the deal for paying a fiver per month per student, Microsoft lets students download up to five installations of the Office apps at home, effectively for free. Many secondary schools are now signed up to Office 365, Microsoft’s scheme that sells access to the Office apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the like – on subscription. Au contraire, it’s your kids that are likely to get a free copy of Microsoft Office for you.

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