The Blue School has encountered structural problems, resulting in the closure of several classrooms and changes to its operational structure.

Headteacher Mark Woodlock informed parents and carers about the situation in a letter, detailing the findings from recent structural investigations.

The investigations, initially focused on detecting Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC), revealed significant issues in the Kennion block, part of the school's structure dating back to the 1950s. While RAAC was not present, the examinations found extensive cracking in the concrete floors and concerns about the design of the concrete flooring joists.

As a consequence, the school has temporarily lost access to 20 classrooms, predominantly in the Kennion tower and its surrounding areas. This situation has necessitated a rearrangement of classroom use and student attendance.

Beginning 2 January, the school will implement a temporary schedule with different year groups attending on alternate days. This measure is planned for the first two weeks of the term, with updates to follow based on ongoing assessments.

In his letter to parents, Mr Woodlock wote:

"With the loss of 20 classrooms, we cannot hold all our current students on site at the same time.

"The loss of classrooms roughly equates to the number of rooms required for just over two year groups at any one point. I appreciate how difficult this will be, but our plan for the first two weeks of the start of term will now be as follows:

Tuesday 2 January

This will be an additional staff INSET day, there will be no students on site. We will use the day to undertake planning for the next few weeks and hope to be in a position to obtain resources from the closed classrooms.

Wednesday 3-Friday 5 January Year 7 and 8 students will remain at home. Some generic tasks will be set for those students on google classroom, but we will not be able to deliver online lessons as we do not currently have the spaces to allow that to happen.

Students in Years 9-13 will be able to come to school, Years 9 and 10 will will remain at home.

We hope by this point that we will be able to deliver online lessons, provided we can find suitable stations to allow staff to do so.

Week commencing 8 January

Years 7, 8, 11, 12 and 13 will be able to come to school. We will change the arrangements for break and lunch. Year 9 will move to early break/lunch and all social/catering time will now take place in Bailey. This avoids any groups of students having to use Kennion for their social time, although the toilets in Kennion will stil be accessible. Medium/long-term plans This plan will take us through the first two weeks and allow us some more time to see what further investigations reveal and what mitigations may be possible, I strongly suspect that beyond this point we will continue to need individual year groups to stay at home on a rolling basis. Our hope is that we can find ways to reduce the number of students absent."

The school is also considering longer-term solutions, such as the use of temporary classrooms.

"Given the limited nature of the conversations that have taken place so far. I cannot give you any certainty over the medium and long term picture," the letter continues.

"We know that the next phase will involve significantly more investigations in those classrooms and that will take most of January. I have already raised the issue of temporary classrooms with the DIE and we are looking at all of the afternatives that may exist.

"My feeling at present is that it will be na surprise if we can bring all of the school back on site before February half-term and it could easily be significantly longer than that."