A school is entering its third week with a home learning rota in place for students due to staff Covid absences.
Churchill Community College, in Wallsend, started remote learning for some pupils during the first week back after the Christmas holidays.
This was due to reduced staffing levels as a result of coronavirus, an issue that a number of schools and frontline services have faced across the country.
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Last week, a timetable was put in place at the secondary school, asking one year group each day to learn from home.
Now parents have been told that the rota will remain in place this week as well.
In a letter sent out on Thursday, headteacher Paul Johnson said: "Thank you for your support this week whilst we have been forced to have some year groups learning remotely, due to significantly reduced staffing due to Covid-19.
"Unfortunately, these staffing problems will continue into next week, so we have made the difficult decision to continue to have some students learning at home for at least part of next week again.
"We are very sorry about the late notice of this, particularly for Year 9, but in the early part of today we have been hit with further Covid-19 cases which have impacted on staffing.
"We do continue to bring in supply staff to help us out, but agencies are also being hit by Covid-19 which means replacement staff are not always available.
"We are determined to minimise the amount of time students are having to learn remotely and keep them in school as much as possible, so we will again be asking one year group each day to access their learning from home. In our planning, we are also trying to avoid year groups missing the same day each week."
According to the rota, Year 9 was asked to stay home on Friday, while all other year groups were to attend school as usual.
On Monday, Year 7 worked remotely, on Tuesday Year 10 will carry out home learning and on Wednesday it is Year 8's turn to work from home.
The school is expecting to be open for all year groups from Thursday however parents will be informed if the situation changes.
Mr Johnson added in his letter: "As I am sure you appreciate that this is a rapidly changing situation, so please be aware that this arrangement is based on our current staffing levels for next week.
"Should we have a significant further increase in staff absence, we may need to ask one or more additional year groups to also learn remotely. We will let you know as soon as we can if we need to do this.
"We continue to be enormously grateful for your ongoing support, and apologise once again for the inconvenience this will cause."
