Fife councillors have agreed to plans which will see a new primary school for Dunfermline East up and running at the start of the next school year.

The school will not at that point have its own building but will be established and run within existing rooms at Inverkeithing Primary school.

The children will be moved to Inverkeithing where they will be taught within their own classrooms, with their own teachers and headteacher. The new school will have its own identity from the start. Funding of £10.5m has been approved to build the new primary school and nursery school.

Following a massive consultation at the end of last year, on where the new school should be built it was decided not to go ahead with plans to build beside St Columba's High School. As yet no alternative site has been identified but this will be done by June 2009. This timescale means that the projected completion date for the new school is 2011.

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Councillor Douglas Chapman, Chair of the Education and Children's Services Committee, said: "Establishing a new primary school for Eastern Dunfermline is a top priority. By setting up the school in August at Inverkeithing we can provide children with the excellent educational experience they deserve.

Cllr. Chapman continued: "It was vitally important for us to make these decisions now in order to provide some certainty for parents and pupils for next school year.

"We will also continue to work closely with officers in Development Services to pin point a site for the new school building."

There are currently three potential sites which will be evaluated by a set of criteria covering the physical sites themselves as well as key development issues.

Of the seven sites previously considered, St Columba's HS has been ruled out. Woodmill HS is unacceptable for the same reasons as apply to the St Columba's site. Lynburn Road and the District Park did not reach an acceptable level of scoring and Lapwing Drive is considered to be inappropriately located to serve the delineated catchment area for a new school.

The two potential sites carried forward from the earlier exercise are South Fod (East) and Dunlin Drive a further site at South Fod (West) has now been identified as a possibility. Further work needs to be done to gather greater technical detail on each potential site.

(GK/JM)