A SCHOOL in Bude has issued an emergency closure following a ‘complete breakdown’ of its IT services.

Budehaven Community School has been forced to close for the day (November 14) after an external IT failure left the site without internet, registration, and telephone services.

The school put out a statement to parents, a spokesperson said: “Due to an unforeseen external IT failure, outside of the control of Budehaven Community School, we have experienced a complete breakdown of our internet, registration, and telephone services in school. This means we are unable to safeguard our pupils and Sixth Form students until this system failure is rectified by our external provider. We will work with them through this evening and tomorrow, to try and solve the problem as soon as possible.”

While the school is closed, online classes have been arranged to ensure teaching continues.

The spokesperson added: “In the meantime, unfortunately, school is closed. Our staff will be setting work on appropriate online platforms tomorrow, for each lesson they would be teaching. This will be communicated to your child. We hope that school will be able to reopen on Friday, and will keep you informed.”

While engineers are on site attempting to solve the problem, the school is hopeful that its Sixth Form open evening can go ahead.

They added: “We hope that this event can go ahead as planned. Should there be any changes to this, we will contact you.

“We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by this external issue, but safeguarding our children is our number one priority. Closing school is always a last resort, but in this instance, it is the only option.

“Thank you for your support as we work with external organisations to remedy this problem.”