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The sheer number of viruses doing the rounds at the moment has impacted school staffing with some "collapsing classes" at Les Varendes High School.
That is where different classes are combined - often within the same subject areas, but across different age groups - to have lessons together.
The situation arose last week.
An email from headteacher Kieran James to students' parents explained what had happened and how he was working with colleagues to ensure it didn't happen again.
"As you may be aware, on a handful of occasions last week we experienced significant levels of unanticipated staff absence, mainly due to illness," wrote Mr James on Monday of this week.
Pictured: Kieran James, Principal of Les Varendes High School and the Sixth Form Centre.
"These were even greater than during the recent pandemic and our teachers committed all their resources to covering for absent colleagues," said Mr James.
"Despite their best efforts, regrettably we were unable to provide every class whose teacher was absent with a cover teacher. Instead, on a few rare occasions, we had to combine classes from different year groups and supervise them in our Lecture Theatre. This is obviously far from ideal and, over the weekend, I have been working with my Education Office colleagues to put in place measures which, we hope, will prevent this situation from happening again."
Now, the Secondary School Partnership Executive Principal, Liz Coffey has offered a further explanation of what happened and has thanked staff for stepping in to ensure all lessons were provided to as high as standard as possible.
"Last week was particularly challenging at Les Varendes High, primarily due to a significant amount of staff absence, including because of sickness. As I’m sure many islanders can attest, there seems to be a lot of viruses doing the rounds and this can have a compounded impact in a school environment," she explained.
"We always try to do everything possible to avoid collapsing classes, which is where we combine different classes, if possible in the same subject area, to have lessons together, but it was unavoidable last week."
Pictured: Liz Coffey, Secondary School Partnership Executive Principal.
Ms Coffey continued: "This week the situation at Les Varendes is improved; we are grateful to our staff who in covering for absent colleagues help to ensure that the educational provision remains of the highest quality possible."
Les Varendes High School offers education for children aged 11-16, and is on the same site as the Sixth Form Centre.
It replaced the former Grammar School from this term offering fully comprehensive classes to students living within its defined catchment area.
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