A weekend cyberattack on Higham Lane School in Nuneaton has forced the secondary to close its site and take phones, email and key learning platforms offline while specialists investigate – underlining how exposed UK schools remain to digital disruption and how central cyber cover has become to their risk protection. For brokers active in education, it is a live test case of how public schemes and commercial capacity now interact when things go wrong.
Higham Lane, part of Central England Academy Trust and teaching around 1,400–1,500 pupils aged 11–18, shut as a precaution after the incident left its IT systems nonfunctional. Telephones, email, Google Classroom, Microsoft SharePoint and school management systems were taken down, and staff and students were told not to log in to any school systems until further notice. Students preparing for exams have been advised to continue independent study during the outage.
The trust has activated its incident response, secured affected systems and brought in independent cyber specialists. Relevant authorities have been notified and the school says it is cooperating with appropriate agencies, including a cyber response team from the Department for Education (DfE). No details have been released on whether ransomware is involved or whether personal data has been compromised.
The pattern is familiar - an attack that starts in email or identity rapidly becomes an operational shutdown and then ripples into people and productivity risk. Commenting on similar incidents, Adam Boynton, senior security strategy manager at Jamf, warned that when students must stay at home, “parents are then forced to take time off from their jobs or pay for extra childcare, which can be expensive for some.”
The Higham Lane incident slots into a highfrequency loss environment. A 2024 government study found that 71% of secondary schools, 86% of further education colleges and 97% of higher education institutions had experienced a cyberattack in the previous 12 months. Schools are attractive targets: they hold sensitive personal and academic data, rely heavily on digital platforms, and often have small, stretched IT teams.
Recent years have brought multischool incidents across Lancashire and Shropshire, as well as an attack on Edinburgh Council that disrupted students’ exam revision. Most attacks are understood to begin with phishing or credential theft, putting the emphasis on basic cyber hygiene - patching, multifactor authentication and effective threatprevention tooling.
For many statefunded schools in England, losses from incidents like this sit not with a commercial insurer but with the DfE’s Risk Protection Arrangement (RPA).
The RPA is explicitly described as the DfE’s alternative to commercial insurance for schools, with the UK government covering losses instead of an insurer. One school business manager quoted on the DfE’s Buying for Schools blog said: “We have found it to be cost effective compared to private insurance. It’s DfE backed so you know it’s going to be legitimate, and claims paid.”
From the 2022/23 membership year, the scheme “offers cover for cyber incidents as standard,” with members able to access a 24/7 incident response service in the event of an attack. The DfE says there are around 9,900 RPA member institutions, representing 52% of all eligible schools.
An RPA Cyber Risk Pilot has helped shape the operational scope of that cover; one school in the pilot was “devastated by a ransomware cyber-attack just 3 days before the end of the summer term,” providing a live test of the support model.
The cyber element of RPA is aligned with National Crime Agency and National Cyber Security Centre guidance on ransom payments. The DfE states that the indemnity “will not apply to or include claims or losses in respect of ransom payments or expert fees to investigate threats.”
Subject to conditions and a valid claim, RPA cyber cover can instead provide expert loss adjusters and legal advisers, and the incident response service may decide that onsite support is appropriate. That blend of financial backstop and bundled services sets a clear benchmark for any commercial cyber products aimed at schools and trusts outside the scheme.
For insurers, MGAs and brokers, the Higham Lane attack is a reminder that a large slice of the statefunded sector is already effectively selfinsured via RPA – including for cyber – which narrows the space for traditional programmes. But it does not remove the broker’s role.
The remaining opportunities are likely to centre on independent schools and others outside RPA, excess or specialist layers over the government scheme, and advisory and riskengineering support that helps education clients meet the cyber hygiene standards now implicitly expected. It also gives brokers a concrete case study to use when asking clients whether they have tested their incident response plans, understood exactly what RPA will and will not pay for, and considered the impact of school closure at peak exam periods.
As Higham Lane works with its trust and government teams to restore systems and reopen fully, the incident shows how quickly a school cyberattack can trigger both operational shutdown and complex questions about who ultimately carries – and manages – the risk. For brokers, that is an opening to move the conversation with education clients beyond limits and premiums into preparedness, response and programme design.
