Students bag extended Christmas break after cyber hit on school IT

Students at a school in Warwickshire, England, have scored an extended Christmas break after a cyberattack crippled its IT systems, forcing classrooms to close and staff to summon government incident responders. Higham Lane School in Nuneaton said it would stay shut on Monday and Tuesday after a cyber incident "took down the …

[Alumoi]

So, what's wrong with pen and paper and teachers actually teaching, not presenting powerpoint slides?

Oh, yeah, progress!

[big_D]

When I started working in IT, when we came up with new systems, we also had to have a fully working manual process that could be implemented in the event of the systems not being available... Today, not so much.

Times have changed and, instead of computer systems augmenting processes, they are the processes. On the one side, it is a win, you have all your books on a simple tablet or ereader and the kids don't have to lug around kilos of books and swap them out between classes in their lockers, on the other hand, if the systems are hacked, you have no backup.

It is also the other systems that are a problem - attendance records etc. taking a register with pen and paper was always something I loved watching as a kid. I loved the symmetry of the slashes for each pupil in attendance. With it all being electronic, you have to have some sort of fall back and then a way to get that manually collected information back into the online system, when it is up and working again.

That said, I don't see it being that much of a problem to provide ad-hoc classes with pen and paper, I've had a few occasions, where I had to give a presentation and the hardware failed and I had to give the lecture or presentation from my notes and memory.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

"So, what's wrong with pen and paper and teachers actually teaching"

I suspect the teachers are more than capable of teaching without IT. With a big IT failure, they probably aren't capable of:

Controlling child access around the school or preventing unauthorised people coming in (door locks and access control are probably all swipe enabled and defaulted to open)

Taking a register so they actually know how many and which children are on site, so that's another welfare and safeguarding issue right away.

Letting pupils pay for their school meals (even if the school was able to send that day's food order to the supplier that morning) - yes, our school has been electronic for school meal ordering and "purchasing" for years, the pupils get a personal swipe card at the start of the year and place their hot meal order for that day during morning registration, which goes to the external supplier and arrives just in time.

Use the phones (I bet they are IP based) in the classroom in case of emergency like first aid or worse, requiring some fallback instead. That's another safety issue.

There are probably loads of other knock on effects that I can't think of that mean it was just simpler for the head to close the school whilst catching breath and figuring out what else to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sharing the cause of the issue

As someone who works in education, one of my bugbears about these common hacks is that the data is never shared with other schools, so unless you know a techie at said hacked school, you never find out what the vulnerability was.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sharing the cause of the issue

I support a number of schools including IT auditing and you can pretty much tick every vulnerability there is. Most IT is a mixture of LEA supplied systems, local or MAT and support outsourced to the lowest cost numpty like RM. Add on top that universally still using USB drives for moving files between school and home including students and unfortunately its a recipe ripe for cyber attacks.

I don't blame the schools, they operate with zero IT budget and often rely on knowledgably parents or students to fix problems. Government answer is often partnership with business for cheap / free hardware but no long term support for security, networking or administration.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Re: Sharing the cause of the issue

"zero IT budget and often rely on knowledgably parents or students to fix problems"

My first thought was that this was instigated by a clever pupil as a way of extending the Christmas holiday. In which case, they go to the top of the IT class (and straight to the head's office!).

[Caver_Dave]

Progress

The school I attended last century was run by the Headmaster and two secretaries using ledgers. (I know as I regularly visited the Headmaster and got to know the secretaries. The Deputy Head used to walk around with a "Slipper in hand" to deal with any minor infractions of the school rules he witnessed - for instance not walking the corridors in an anti-clockwise direction, or not walking. And to head off some comments regarding Public Schools, this was a newly formed Comprehensive after the 11+ was dropped by the LEA.)

To give context, the BBC micro's in the computing labs were already old when I was at the school.

The school now has no more pupils that when I attended, but I met its "Data Manager" recently who is part of a 5 person IT team.

They have built an extra block of classrooms as 2 of the old classrooms are now used to house all the secretarial (he reckoned about 10) and IT staff.

The "Data Manager" blamed the increased number of SENS students, but it sounds like BS to me.

Maybe someone who works in an education environment can comment and educate me?

[Oneman2Many]

Re: Progress

Thanks to meaningless OFSTED and more meaningful processes like safeguarding there is 100x more paperwork then when you attended school. Add on that its possible that its hub for a MAT and they are doing the paperwork for a number of schools centrally. Having 5 IT staff indicated they are either well funded or pretty big school.

The SEN thing is real, much more recognition of issues, but a lot of paperwork as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Progress

You see the same in the medical sector. When I were a kid our GP practice had two doctors and one nurse - she kept the patient records under control. The two doctors were also known to make house calls when necessary. Where I currently live the local GP practice has gone from two doctors to one but does act as a pharmacy dispensing prescriptions. since the local chemist shut down years ago. There are generally 3 pharmacy / clerical staff (Patient Navigators no less) and a couple of practice nurses.

Progress - ya gotta luv it.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Re: Progress

"The 'Data Manager' blamed the increased number of SENS students, but it sounds like BS to me."

SEN (Special Educational Needs) certainly can be a huge drain on finances and people. Schools are mandated to provide it (and quite rightly too, why should anyone be denied education through no fault of their own) but are left to find the full funding to do so from their own budgets.

Round our way, it was an open secret that one of the local primary schools passively rejected SEN pupils because they didn't want to have to spend their budget on them. Another nearby school with a far more benevolent head therefore always had more than their "fair" share of SEN pupils and hence more than their fair share of financial struggles as well.

[Jedit]

Solution: install ICE

That's what we did in North East Scotland. Over a foot of snow came down this week, so the schools were closed anyway. We don't know if anyone decided to cybernobble us, but if they did they've wasted their time.

[Korev]

Re: Solution: install ICE

Sounds like just the SNOW ticket

[Tron]

So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

But the schools just close whenever the PCs are down.

Pathetic.

Schools should be able to function without tech. Starmer needs to manage the decline better.

[Oneman2Many]

Re: So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

I suspect things like lesson plans, timetables are online. Even small things like badge access could have been affected. If its a small primary school I'm sure they can manage but some of the larger schools with 2,000+ pupils and hundreds of staff, much like larger business IT being down could be a show stopper.

[Tron]

Re: So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

Badge access. Seriously? The school as prison, discuss. Remember to include the LLM you used in your notes.

World gone mad.

[Cav]

Re: So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

"School as prison". Seriously? You think kids should have access everywhere at all times? Walk in store cupboards for dangerous chemicals? When I was at school we were anaesthetizing bugs with ether. Equipment rooms? Plant rooms? Supplies? The secretaries office? Plenty of staff-only rooms exist in a school.

Badge access is much safer and more efficient than a proliferation of physical keys that people can copy far more easily than the proximity chips in an ID badge. Someone leaves? Instantly disable all permissions on their badge. With keys, you have to hope they return them and haven't taken a copy for themselves.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

-- Seriously? You think kids should have access everywhere at all times? --

No, but way back in time, that's what teachers and prefects were for.

[Cav]

Re: So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

Nonsense. That's what physical keys were for...

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Re: So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

You have to have access control in a school. You have to ensure that when the pupils are in your charge, they can't just walk out of even the classroom and disappear to go and fiddle in the plant room, the kitchen, the store cupboards etc. Same goes for preventing unauthorised people getting in.

If you're the teacher and you're distracted by a nosebleed at the back of the class and someone else flicking a ruler at another child, when little Jonny's mum and dad turn up at the end of the day and say "where's my child?", you can't just say "I don't know".

[Cav]

Re: So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

Starmer, who has been in office about 18 months needs to do better, when it was 14 YEARS of Tory misrule that drove the country into the ground? Stupidity.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

Re: So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

"Starmer, who has been in office about 18 months needs to do better, when it was 14 YEARS of Tory misrule that drove the country into the ground?"

Don't forget some of it was a conservative/liberal coalition, then there was labour government before them and the conservative one before that, and ...

Maybe a lot of us over estimate the ability of governments of any type to actually make a positive* difference in the face of overwhelming societal or technological trends?

I said "positive", is easier to destroy than to create.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So the moral panic du jour is about being dependent on US cloud services.

Yeah, he absolutely should have been dealing with every minute of the last 50 years of decline in education

Idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Badge access. Seriously?

I am guessing toy haven't been to school in the last 10 4.years or understand anything about safeguarding ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Badge access. Seriously?

There's some serious gammon energy emanating from some of the comments, "I used to get thrashed by the headmaster with a cat o nine tails and it didn't do me any harm, kids today do not know they're born"

[Graham Newton]

Was it only me that thought a student's bag caused the issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

I’m in the unique position of having worked as a science teacher for many years and then moving into IT, when the school closed and I was made redundant. I’ve even work for the local council as a peripatetic tech in primary schools.

The only thing a lot of these comments show is just how many armchair experts this country has and how little they really know.

And as for our politicians, sadly the calibre of most of them over the last 50 years, (of whatever party), has been sadly lacking. Hence the reason the country is in the mess that it is.