# UK High School Shut Down After Cyber Incident Amid Rising Attacks on Education **Great Marlow School** in Buckinghamshire, England, sent the majority of its 1,428 pupils home for a second consecutive day on Thursday after a “cybersecurity incident affecting our ICT systems.” Only students sitting **GCSE** and **A-Level** external examinations were permitted to attend, with other year groups advised to stay home. Headteacher **Guy Pendlebury** confirmed the school is working with specialist IT and cybersecurity professionals to resolve the issue, responding in line with guidance from the **Department for Education (DfE)** and the **National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)**. He emphasized that “The safety and well-being of our students, staff, and wider school community remain our highest priority at all times.” ## A Troubling Trend in Education The incident at **Great Marlow School** is not isolated. Data from the **UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)** reveals 1,959 cyber incidents affecting the education and childcare sector between 2019 and 2025. The year 2023 saw a peak with 354 incidents, driven in part by ransomware gangs like **Vice Society** attempting to extort schools by publishing sensitive student data on dark net sites. Latest figures for 2025 show 259 incidents reported to the **ICO**. Both the **ICO** and the **NCSC** have voiced concerns that ransomware victims are increasingly keeping incidents secret, prompting the British government to consider legal obligations for victims to report such attacks to appropriate authorities. ## Student Hackers and Broader Threats The nature of the incident at **Great Marlow School** remains unconfirmed. However, the **ICO** warned last year that student hackers, often motivated by dares, are contributing to an increasing number of cyberattacks and data breaches in schools. In April, a 16-year-old boy was arrested in Northern Ireland following a cyberattack that disrupted educational systems for potentially hundreds of thousands of students. Earlier this year, **Higham Lane School** in Nuneaton was also forced to close due to a cyberattack. Separately, the **University of Nottingham** confirmed a cyber incident, claimed by the **Shiny Hunters** cyberextortion gang, impacting a “significant amount” of data belonging to current and former students. ## Global Impact The issue extends beyond the UK. In the United States, the **FCC** reports approximately 400 disclosed cyber incidents at schools annually, with recovery times ranging from two to nine months. Research indicates that at least 75% of data breaches in U.S. public school districts are linked to security incidents involving vendors. A recent attack on the popular learning tool **Canvas** reportedly affected over 9,000 schools. In November 2023, several U.S. schools and universities experienced simultaneous outages amid a wave of ransomware attacks targeting educational institutions, leading multiple districts to coordinate with the **FBI** to address the threat.