We have a legal obligation to report any data breach identified as part of our investigation the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) in line with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 / GDPR and where possible within 72 hours. We will be working along side our Local Authority Data Protection Officer (DPO) to ensure any and all obligations are met.

In consultation with the Trust we have completed a risk assessment on the immediate impact from the ongoing cyber event taking into account the safeguarding and wellbeing of our pupils and staff.

In order to support the restorations of the schools systems and gather evidence to prevent an incident happening like this again we have taken the difficult decision to close the school to all pupils and staff initially on Monday 5th and Tuesday 6th of January. We aim to reopen on the 7th however until we fully understand the scope of the work required I am unable to confirm this opening date at present. We will update you on Tuesday morning with further information relating to the incident and how we plan to reopen the school in a safe and controlled manner.

I appreciate that this will cause some problems for parents/carers with regards to childcare arrangements and apologise for any inconvenience but feel that we have no option other than to take this course of action in order to preserve the integrity of the network.

We will continue to assess the situation and update parents / carers as necessary. Communications will be sent out via MyEd communications system, school websites and social media accounts.

Thank you for your understanding.