Mr Guthrie said classroom assistants at his school were also absent because of illness.
“It’s not just been flu, it’s been stomach bugs, very sore throats and illnesses in other ways as well but over the course of last week, it was very, very challenging with the number of pupils and staff off,” Mr Guthrie told BBC’s North West Today programme.
“It took me back to 2020, to be quite honest, the attendance was actually worse last week than it would have been at any of the worst points, if you like, back in Covid times so, yeah, it was a bit of a shock.”
The impact of the high levels of absence, Mr Guthrie said, meant teachers were not able to carry out new learning in terms of literacy and numeracy.
“It was hitting the younger children more at the start of last week but towards the end of the week, we noticed that it was the upper end of school, our P5-to-P7s, where we were seeing a higher absence rate but at the start of last week, it was more primary one, primary two,” he said.
