As you are at school, and therefore, probably, connecting using the schools network, IRC may be blocked by the school.

It is not uncommon for schools to regulate what can and can't be sent over their network, due to the fact that as a student you probably signed an agreement stating that the school's computer system is to be used for educational purposes only.

Most schools do not include IRC as educational.

Your next step should be to contact the IT department at your school, and ask them if they block IRC ports.

If they do, then you can ask them if there is a way for you to access IRC. Sometimes they allow connections to things like IRC if the connections are made outside of normal class hours.

It is against the policy of this forum to provide you with assistance in trying to get around your school's restrictions.

As noted in at least one other post (which I'm not going to try searching for), in-spite of the fact that the error message indicates that the problem is software based, most of the solutions that do end up working require the resetting or replacement of hardware.