A HERO teacher may have prevented a serious incident at a Wimborne school on Friday after a child brought an unexploded bomb into class.

Andy Dickinson, head of technology at the Queen Elizabeth's School, sprang into action after a year nine boy brought in a Second World War practice aircraft bomb found in a field to show his friends.

Mr Dickinson picked up the heavy metal device, used in the war to teach flyers how to drop bombs on target, and took it out to the middle of the school athletics field before calling in police and bomb disposal experts.

Sgt Malcolm Quigley from the 11 EOD regiment, Royal Logistics Corps, based at Tidworth in Wiltshire, said: "Although these are smoke bombs they go up with quite a bang and they could easily hurt someone. We would not advise someone to move them but in this case, in moving it away from the children as quickly as possible, he did the right thing."

Headteacher Andy Puttock said: "It was quite a brave thing to do. He took the view it was better off somewhere safe and took it out of the school. He reacted in a very sensible and calm way."

The alert was raised just before 2.45pm while the school's 1,500 pupils were still in lessons and, on advice from the experts, the day continued as usual while a buffer zone around the field was cordoned off by officers.

The bomb disposal team blew up the bomb in a controlled explosion just after 5.30pm, packing the area around the bomb with sandbags made up with sand from the school's long jump pit.

Children went home as usual and the leisure centre behind the school remained open except for a few minutes while the controlled explosion was carried out.

Police and the school have spoken to the boy in question and his parents but the incident is not being treated as malicious in intention.