Around 500 pupils at a Merseyside high school were told to stay at home on Monday morning because too many teachers were self-isolating.
St Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, in Whiston, tweeted on Sunday night saying all pupils in Years 7, 8 and 9 should stay at home due to “staff shortages in relation to Covid-19 ”.
The announcement followed news on Friday (October 2) that 12 members of staff and 29 pupils in Year 10 had been told to self-isolate after a case of Covid-19 was confirmed at the school.
The sudden loss of 12 members of staff meant the school had to send four classes home on Friday as well.
In a letter home to parents on Friday, headteacher Helen Pinnington said: “Due to having to send staff home to self-isolate at short notice I also sent four classes home as we had no staff available to teach them.”
It is not clear if more staff were told to self-isolate over the weekend, but on Monday the school was only open to pupils in Years 10 and 11.
St Edmund Arrowsmith is not the first school in Knowsley to send children home since reopening at the beginning of September.
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However, previous decisions have generally been based on pupils coming into close contact with confirmed Covid-19 cases, not staff shortages.
The development at St Edmund Arrowsmith suggests a return to the situation at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis when staff shortages forced schools to close across the country even before the formal lockdown began.
Elsewhere in Knowsley, Kirkby High School reported another two confirmed cases of Covid-19 among its students on October 2, bringing the school’s total number of confirmed cases to five.
