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The children might brings books with them to read on the safe areas. Of course there were no real safe areas. Few schools hade bomb shelters. We do note some structures built or reinforced with sand bags. Presumably the MOE or ARP provided technical asiistance in constructing these. We are not sure how effective they were or how many schools had them. Building shelters for an entire school was usually not feasible. We note a scholl in Wales that had access to a shelter built in a nearby park, but this ws an exception. They were called bomb shelters, but that seems a streach in terms of what a real bomb sheter should be, Knoll School in Hove had one of these structures. They called it 'The Trenches'. Some schools may have had Andeson shelters or slit trenches. Anderson shelters took up to much space to be very useful for many schools. One souce tells us, "There were air raid shelters built in the school grounds; half underground, they always smelt damp." [Arnold] Every school had its own uniques qualities and issues. Often there was not one single area for the whole school. Some classes might be assigned different areas. Here theey would be tested to determine how well the group assigned fittited into the area. We note a photograph of of a school in Middlesex thatbcould accomodate 1,000 children in 'deep sheltrs', but this was very rare. Facilities to safely accomodate an entire school were rare. Most students had to make do with areas judged the most safe at the school. This might be the hall way in the main building. Or it could be some other sturdy structure. It had to be away from windows. If a German bomb made a direct hit, it could totally destroy the school and the children in it. Some teachers might even try to teach some lessons in the safe areas as they were sometimes there for a while. This was more common during actual air raids. Normally the children did not put on their gas masks in the safe areas, but their might be occasional drills just to make sure they could do so quickly.
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