A BRADFORD school is temporarily closing its doors after being hit with an outbreak of Covid-19.

St Bede's and St Joseph's Catholic College has students and staff self-isolating after it reported "a number of confirmed cases" of coronavirus, said headteacher Mr Bentley.

The school has made the decision to close after cases spread "mainly amongst students across Year 7 to Year 10", he added.

Its Year 12 group, however, has been "barely affected" by the outbreak, and will therefore continue to be educated on site.

Mr Bentley said: "In order to safeguard the health of our students and their families by breaking chains of transmission, and to ensure quality lessons can continue, albeit remotely, the decision has been made, in consultation with Bradford Council, to close the Year 8, 9 and 10 bubbles, and to ask all students to stay at home until Monday 19 July, pending a further review of the situation on Friday 16 July. This new date will now apply to Year 7.

"It has got to the point now where over 50 per cent of students in those year groups are now at home, and not in school. There are also 20 members of staff who are isolating at home as well, either because they tested positive for the virus themselves, or because they have been a close contact of someone who has.

“This compromises our educational provision somewhat. If you are only teaching half of your class in school you have also got to prepare for the half of the class which is at home, and both sets of students, naturally, do not get the same deal.

“Because we have such a good remote learning arrangement through Microsoft Teams, we are confident that if all students are at home, then they will get a better quality of education, under the circumstances, than if they were split up.

“We also think that the reason why our school has so many cases is because we are a Catholic school, and we therefore have students from all over the city. We do not pull our students from just one area, but from all over Bradford, and that is what is possibly causing this advancement of the outbreak.

“Also, we simply do not have enough staff to be able to track and trace students as quickly as we would like. We had support staff working until 10 or 11pm last night, trying to keep on top of this, and we do not have the capacity to do that, so that is another reason why we are taking this break.

“It is an educational and health decision we have made. Despite all of these national restrictions seemingly easing, we cannot, in all conscience, allow our youngsters and their families to be exposed to this virus in this way.

“It would be very imprudent and unethical of me to allow that to happen, hence why we have made this decision.”