East Lothian schools taken offline over virus alert

At least 16,000 pupils and teaching staff have been affected in East Lothian

East Lothian Council's entire education online network has been shut down over virus fears.

An investigation has been launched after internet access had to be frozen for 16,000 pupils and teaching staff in the area.

The decision to take seven secondary schools and 36 primary schools offline was made on Monday afternoon, with access still blocked 24 hours later.

The local authority said the move was "precautionary" while it investigated a number of antivirus alerts and it was working with schools to "minimise disruption".

Chromebook access

Students were given access to the education system through their Google Chromebooks earlier on Tuesday but other equipment remained offline.

It means materials like lesson plans and pastoral notes are inaccessible to hundreds of teaching and admin staff.

There is no estimation as to when the system will be restored.

It is understood there are contingency plans in schools for being offline.

An East Lothian Council spokesperson, said: "We have taken the precautionary step of taking our schools temporarily offline while we investigate a number of antivirus alerts on our education network.

"Work to determine the cause continues and we are liaising with school teams and our suppliers to minimise disruption.

"Chromebook access has since been re-enabled to education sites. There is no indication our systems have been compromised."

The decision to take the system offline comes just weeks after the local authority had to suspend pupil access to Gmail accounts after an email containing "inappropriate" content went viral after being sent from a student's account.

Additional reporting from Local Democracy Reporter Marie Sharp.