converting Word documents to something sensible

I have to build a web site for a local government education authority in the UK which will allow them to make available a large range of documents to schools. They INSIST on submitting documents in Word format. I think it is immoral to make the schools have to accept documents in that format so I am determined to translate them to something sensible (html, rtf or pdf will do) at the server. The server is a Linux box so there's no opportunity to play any tricks with COM. Has anyone come across any tools to do this, using php or otherwise? Cheers -- Phil Driscoll