As part of the plans St Ronan’s will be moved into the vacant Ladyton Primary, with £1.5 million earmarked to upgrade both buildings.

The decision was taken to move forward with the shake-up plans by the Educational Services Committee on Wednesday.

In addition to the school plans, Ladyton Nursery will be converted to an under-threes centre, while three to five-year-olds would attend a new facility in St Ronan’s Primary.

At the meeting, Terry Lanagan — the executive director of Educational Services — explained to committee the opportunity had arisen because Scottish Government funding that would have previously gone into the new Our Lady and St Patrick’s (OLSP) project was now freed up.

The executive director addressed the contrast in plans for these schools to the new £15million school campus proposed in neighbouring Balloch to accommodate Jamestown, St Kessogs and Haldane primaries.

Mr Lanagan said: “There has been some speculation on social media as to why we are proposing these plans.

“This is because of the specific conditions of the schools concerned. The three schools involved in the other development are not in good condition and are also not suitable for modern education. The Highdykes building is in a very, very, poor condition. Both St Ronan’s and Ladyton are in a condition which can be refurbished to a high standard.

“I think there’s been speculation for a number of years of Ladyton and Highdykes being amalgamated and that process was started by the schools’ previous head teachers through merging the house systems and starting to work together.

“As for St Ronan’s, there are 93 pupils rattling about in there at the moment. These plans move three schools from a category C to a category B.” Council leader Martin Rooney asked the director whether there was any future plans to merge more schools into the St Ronan’s building given it would still only be at 42 per cent capacity once Highdykes and Ladyton were moved in.

Mr Lanagan confirmed there was no plans “at this stage” to merge any more schools into the building.

Councillor George Black criticised the report before committee questioning why there were no other options available to the public.

Cllr Black then put forward an amendment stating the strategy should be to “use the situation we are in, to examine the potential of our schools through smaller class sizes and smaller schools.” However, the amendment failed to find support amongst the committee and wasn’t passed.