YORK St John University will continue to offer face-to-face teaching to a select number of critical courses over the lockdown period.

The university said that students would still be welcome to attend study spaces, the library, accommodation, and on-campus supermarkets.

It added that further guidance would also be issued about student accommodation.

A spokesman said: “York St John University will only be delivering limited face-to-face teaching to a small number of students on critical courses defined by the government in national lockdown guidance from the Jan 4 until further notice.

“We know how much all of our students value face-to-face learning opportunities and look forward to welcoming them safely back on campus as soon as Government restrictions allow. Until then, all learning, teaching and assessment activity for most students will take place online.”

On Wednesday The University of York said it had made the decision to offer online teaching for the term, adding: “To offer some level of stability to our students, we have made the very difficult decision that all classroom-based teaching activity will be delivered online for the entirety of the Spring Term.

“We hope to be able to provide in-person teaching using specialist teaching spaces (eg lab and performance spaces), subject to further Government guidance, later in the term.”

In November York St John opened a testing site to offer self-swab, lateral flow device tests. Lateral flow devices do not require a laboratory to process the test, and can be conducted at a dedicated testing site by trained personnel and can rapidly turn around results within an hour.