Middle Park State School, an independent public school in the south-west of Brisbane, sent a letter to parents explaining the school had been struck by a host of influenza cases, forcing them to effectively close the school on Friday.

A letter sent to parents by principal Ann Kitchin said on Thursday 182 children and 15 staff were absent with influenza A and B cases.

"In response to the situation we will have a cleaning team here to run additional shifts," the letter said.

"We urge all parents to keep children all students home tomorrow."

Education department regional director Helen Kenworthy said they hoped a break from regular classes until Monday would allow them to thoroughly clean the school and get ahead of the outbreak.

"We didn't feel we needed to close the school completely because there still could be a number of students who potentially still needed to come to school," Ms Kenworthy said.

"An additional cleaning team will come in and we're working through all the classrooms to sanitise, to disinfect desktops, door handles, all those things that children touch each day.

"By Monday we'd expect to have eliminated all the germs as much as possible and we'd have children back as normal."

The school is expected to open as normal on Monday but Ms Kenworthy said any sign that the outbreak was gaining steam again and they would send children home a second time.

Queensland Health is advising the school about how best to respond to the incident.

Metro South Public Health Unit physician Kari Jarvinen said there didn't appear to be anything unusual about the strain of flu causing the outbreak.

"One key thing that we emphasise not just for this school but in general is it is so important for sick children and adults to stay away from the school or childcare or workplace," Dr Jarvinen said.

"When sick children go to school they keep spreading the bug quite easily because influenza is quite easily spread, and then you get big outbreaks."

He said the incident highlighted the need for people to get a flu vaccination, stressing it still wasn't too late for people to get one.

Children with flu symptoms were asked to be kept home between five and seven days until their symptoms were cleared.

The school had been in correspondence with the Public Health Unit, Ms Kitchin said, and a skeleton staff would be on-hand on Friday to assist with parents who could not arrange for childcare.

The outbreak also required school activities to be cancelled, while a year 5 camp had no symptoms of the flu.

In a post on the school's Facebook page from August 1, the school warned influenza had hit the surrounding suburbs "hard".

Anyone with health concerns for themselves or their child should visit their GP, contact the nearest public health unit or call 13 HEALTH.