Angry Dunfermline parents want to put the brakes on changes to school catchment areas which would see their children bussed out of the town.
Children from Masterton Primary School will go to Inverkeithing High rather than Woodmill High under rezoning of Dunfermline, Inverkeithing, Queen Anne and Woodmill high schools.
Parents are furious youngsters may be educated outside the town, potentially splitting them from friends who live nearby and leaving them no option to walk to and from school.
However, shifting Rosyth’s Kings Road Primary School into Inverkeithing’s catchment area, which was also unpopular, has been ruled out in the revised proposal which councillors will be asked on Tuesday to approve for public consultation.
One parent of a P7 pupil, who did not wish to be named, said Masterton children could spend up to 57 minutes on the bus compared to the 13 minutes it could take Rosyth pupils to travel to Inverkeithing.
He said: “They will spend up to 143 hours a year travelling and that’s 143 hours they could be learning, being active or spending time with their family.
“If this decision goes ahead my daughter will be split up from all of her friends as most, because they have older siblings there, will go to Dunfermline and Woodmill.
“That will potentially leave her isolated and put her at risk of bullying.
“My daughter’s friends are in Dunfermline, the recreation she does is in Dunfermline, she’s part of the Dunfermline community.”
Dunfermline MSP Shirley-Anne Somerville said the proposal would see pupils in streets on one side of Dover Way setting out on foot to school in Dunfermline while those on the other side boarded the bus to Inverkeithing.
She said: “It is disappointing that education officers have, despite parent’s concerns, recommended this as their preferred option. There is no identified walking route.
“Ultimately, Dunfermline children should be going to school in Dunfermline, and I am calling for that to continue.”
She claimed the whole “sorry saga” was a legacy of “years of prevarication” by the previous administration and failure to deal with a historic capacity issue in the town’s school.
The consultation documents states rezoning Masterton Primary area to Inverkeithing High School would “meet the need to manage the capacity of our secondary school estate over a geographical area, and the ambition to create secondary school communities within a geographical area”.
It says: “Children living within all geographical areas would be afforded the opportunity to move to secondary school with their classmates. All of the household addresses within the primary school catchments can be associated with a single secondary school catchment, enabling a whole primary 7 class to move together to a single secondary school.”
If Kings Road Primary was rezoned to Inverkeithing there would be no continuous border around the secondary school catchment area of Inverkeithing or Dunfermline, it says.
It also says there would be no available walking route for Masterton children but they would be provided with free transport.
Consultation events will take place in Woodmill High School on October 30, Dunfermline on November 7, Inverkeithing on November 14 and Queen Anne on November 23, all from 6pm to 7.30pm.
