Cyberattack Disrupts British High School Operations
Great Marlow School in Buckinghamshire, England, was forced to send the majority of its students home for the second consecutive day due to a cybersecurity incident affecting its ICT systems. The school, which has 1,428 pupils according to the Department for Education (DfE), will remain closed while it works with specialist IT and cybersecurity professionals to resolve the issue.
Headteacher Guy Pendlebury informed parents that only students sitting GCSE and A-Level external examinations would be permitted to attend school, with all other year groups advised to stay at home. Pendlebury pledged to provide a further update by the end of the school day and stated that the school was responding to the incident in line with guidance from the DfE and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
Incident Response and Guidance
Pendlebury emphasized that the safety and well-being of students, staff, and the wider school community remain the highest priority. The school's response to the incident is guided by the DfE and NCSC, which have expressed concern over the increasing number of ransomware attacks targeting educational institutions.
Data from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) reveals that there were 1,959 incidents affecting the education and childcare sector between 2019 and 2025. The figure for 2023 was 354, the highest single year in the dataset, with ransomware gangs such as Vice Society attempting to extort schools by publishing sensitive files about at-risk children on their dark net websites.
Cyberattacks in Educational Institutions
The latest figures for attacks on schools cover 2025, with 259 incidents reported to the ICO. Both the ICO and NCSC have expressed concern that ransomware victims are increasingly keeping incidents secret. The British government is considering plans to put legal obligations on ransomware attack victims to report incidents to appropriate authorities.
The nature of the incident affecting Great Marlow School has not been confirmed. However, the ICO warned last year that student hackers motivated by dares are driving an increasing number of cyberattacks and data breaches affecting schools. In April, a 16-year-old boy was arrested in Northern Ireland after a cyberattack disrupted access to educational systems used by potentially hundreds of thousands of students.
Global Cyberattack Trends
In the United States, the FCC has stated that disclosed cyber incidents at schools now number around 400 a year, with recovery times ranging from two to nine months. Research has linked at least 75% of data breach incidents affecting U.S. public school districts to security incidents involving vendors. A recent attack on the popular learning tool Canvas was claimed to have affected more than 9,000 schools.
In November 2023, several U.S. schools and universities reported simultaneous outages amid a spate of ransomware attacks targeting educational institutions, with multiple districts coordinating with the FBI to address the threat. The University of Nottingham, 100 miles north of Great Marlow School, separately confirmed a cyber incident claimed by the Shiny Hunters cyberextortion gang, impacting a significant amount of data affecting both current and former students.
The incident at Great Marlow School highlights the growing concern over cyberattacks in educational institutions and the need for robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data and ensure the continuity of educational services.
- The ICO has reported 1,959 incidents affecting the education and childcare sector between 2019 and 2025.
- The figure for 2023 was 354, the highest single year in the dataset.
- Ransomware gangs such as Vice Society have attempted to extort schools by publishing sensitive files about at-risk children on their dark net websites.
- The British government is considering plans to put legal obligations on ransomware attack victims to report incidents to appropriate authorities.
The safety and well-being of our students, staff, and wider school community remain our highest priority at all times. - Guy Pendlebury, Headteacher, Great Marlow School
For more information on cybersecurity and cyberattacks in educational institutions, visit the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) website or the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website.
Source: The Record