The war has given many education authorities a new and complicated problem to solve. These are the authorities of evacuation and of reception areas. In the former, between twenty and thirty per cent, of elementary school children have been evacuated to and have remained in the reception areas, a small percentage have made private arrangements for shelter in the country, leaving, perhaps, seventy per cent, of the children remaining at home.

Correspondingly the reception areas have had their school rolls increased in number in the same proportion, this necessitating in many cases modifications of the school organization.

The fact, however, remains that the well-planned evacuation scheme for school children in school parties has broken down through lack of complete support from the parents living in the vulnerable areas. A twenty or thirty per cent, response leaves the education authority of the evacuation area with the major task of education still to be carried out within its own precincts. At the same time the teaching staffs, in the first place, left with the evacuated children and were billeted in the reception areas. A large proportion have now, however, been recalled. Taking first the problem as affecting the children who refused to be evacuated, the President of the Board of Education, after much pressure, announced in the House of Lords on November 1st, 1939: