Heard an interesting talk last night at WYLUG in Leeds, UK from Ian Lynch about HOME | International Grades - Open Technologies, a company that provides certification for IT for 7-14 year olds.
As an ex-primary school teacher and OO contributor, he has set up an entirely free and open source paperless way of gaining recognised accreditation for IT skills for this age range.
His argument is that teaching with and about FOSS at this age is the surest way of ensuring the ideas become widely known.
Also, by using FOSS to deliver the awards in a new way, he can provide greater security as well as undercutting awarding bodies that rely on paper.