Castle School Education Trust

Charfield Primary School operates as a primary educational institution within the United Kingdom. The school is also known by the alias Schools in the Castle School Education Trust, reflecting its affiliation with that multi‑academy trust. As a primary school, its core function is to provide compulsory education to children in the early years of schooling. The school serves pupils from the local area where the trust’s schools are located. Being part of the Castle School Education Trust indicates that it operates under the trust’s governance structure. The trust’s schools are situated in South Gloucestershire, as indicated by the location of the incident that affected them.

On 17 March 2021 a ransomware attack was launched against multiple schools within the Castle School Education Trust. The attack was described as a deliberate and focused effort to compromise the trust’s educational network. It resulted in the denial of access to critical IT systems, disrupting normal operations across all trust schools. Among the schools specifically mentioned as impacted were Castle School, Marlwood School and Charfield Primary School. The disruption prevented staff and pupils from using digital resources for teaching and learning for an unspecified period. The incident underscores the vulnerability of shared technology infrastructure in multi‑school trusts and the importance of cyber‑resilience measures.