KIDS moving into new homes next to the award-winning Carnegie Primary School in Dunfermline won’t be able to enrol there. 

Almost 200 houses are to be built a few minutes’ walk from the school gates, and in the catchment area, but children who live there face going to Touch PS instead. 

It’s about a kilometre away and that’s because Carnegie is full up, can’t be extended any further and, although Touch has some capacity, it could soon require a £1.5 million extension to cope with demand. 

A council report said: “In terms of primary school capacity, this area of Dunfermline is greatly constrained. 

“The catchment school has very little capacity and no way to expand and the neighbouring schools all have limited capacity and need to expand to accommodate this development. 

“On this basis, there is a critical capacity risk in terms of primary school provision in the area.”

Earlier this month, the council said a four-classroom extension, costing £1.9m, will be needed at Masterton PS to cope with more than 400 homes set to be built in its catchment area. 

A four-classroom, £2m extension was completed at Carnegie in August 2016. 

The Press’ Action for Schools campaign has highlighted the pressure that housebuilding is piling on a creaking education system.

The council have Scottish Government targets to meet for housebuilding but there are already capacity risks at primary and secondary schools in Dunfermline and 12,000 more homes to be built in the next 20 years. 

BDW Trading Ltd – part of Barratt Homes – have now received permission for 114 homes at Lynebank South and 85 homes at the adjacent South Fod Farm. 

Both sites are in the catchment area for Carnegie PS but, in a report on South Fod Farm, the council stated: “In terms of the primary school considerations, Carnegie PS has significant capacity issues and does not have capacity to fully accommodate this development. 

“The school has relatively recently been extended and physically there is no scope for the school to be extended further. 

“This site, however, is on the border with the catchment of Touch PS and the full site is within 950 metres of that primary school. 

“Touch PS has therefore been considered as an alternative location for pupils generated by this site.”

However, it added: “Touch PS has some capacity, however, there is another proposed development site within this catchment (Lynebank North) and another (Lynebank South) which is partly within this catchment and partly within Carnegie PS’s catchment. 

“If this site also has to be accommodated within Touch PS then the solution to accommodate all three developments is a three-class
extension at a cost of £1.5m and the cost of this would be spread across the three sites.” 

The council said both sites were also in the catchment of Woodmill and St Columba’s high schools and St Margaret’s PS. 

They said Woodmill and Carnegie “have capacity issues which require a solution” and St Margaret’s has a “cumulative longer-term risk”.

As both plans were approved, the council will now ask for more than £1m from the developers in education contributions, with the cash going towards the Touch PS extension.

It also added that sending kids to Touch “would result in a longer walking distance and would require a new safe route to school”. 

When it opened in August 2011, at a cost of £9.6m, the then First Minister Alex Salmond called Carnegie PS “the best school in Scotland”. 

Less than four years later, plans for the four-classroom extension were submitted.  

The school’s innovative design, it has a wind turbine, a combined heat and power plant and external cedar cladding, led to an ‘Outstanding’ BREEAM award for its environmental credentials and the label of one of the UK’s greenest schools.