The move to shut Dunshalt Primary, near Auchtermuchty, came despite a hard-fought battle by four mothers.

One parent, Pauline Stevenson, whose eight-year-old son Lewis attends the school, explains why she wanted it to remain open.

Closure had been threatened several times since opening in 1875, but the feeling was this was the last.

With less than two weeks to get arguments for retention to the council offices, one official quietly remarked to me: "You don't have time."

How unwise to throw such a gauntlet to a village with an immense sense of community.

Pauline Stevenson has one child at the school

Four mums, including myself, put their lives aside to save the school.

Our motives were many, but we all felt that the school was a model of excellence to be preserved.

What did we do with our two weeks?

We researched roll calculations and finance - we had at least one formal placing request and several informal requests for information.

We registered the school as an eco-school and set up a school club to identify money-saving ideas for the council.

We suggested alternative sources of funding for the school, rallied the support of our former head teacher, pupils past and present, Dunshalt villagers, councillors and MSP Iain Smith.

Margaret, our local shop owner, collected 400 names in a petition of support.

We felt we had made a strong case to support retaining the school and to give us time to make the school viable.

Yet, today we've learned that Fife Council will close our school.

The report the council sent to the decision-making children's committee omitted all our written comments and submissions and still contained inaccuracies.

Last month, my eight-year-old said: "Mummy, I didn't want to leave school today because it was so good."

We parents had no voice - we are not allowed to speak at the Children's Committee meeting.

Why do I care so much? It's my belief that we should be proud of our educational heritage, learn from what is successful, retain it and go on to re-create it elsewhere.

And the proof is that Dunshalt School currently has 100% attainment level.

Also, in the packed public meeting, as officials purported that the Dunshalt School education was inadequate because of a lack of mixing with peers, current and former pupils aged 10 and under were unafraid to make pertinent points and to correctly question the validity of figures.

Witnessing these well-adjusted, confident, articulate children taking on officials suggested to me that, whilst theory may dictate mixing with peers is crucial to a child's education, reality does not support that premise.

Perhaps the perceived wisdom of the education policy should be questioned.

'I didn't want to leave'

Rather than being detrimental, Dunshalt School prepares children for life in ways that should not be disregarded.

What about the projected roll? Our research showed that had there been no uncertainty about the future of the school, had pre and post-school care been available in the village and had the school been reverted back to P1 to P7 this academic year, the roll would have been 26, not seven.

Much has been made about the cost of teaching children in Dunshalt and the emotive issue that this takes finance away from other schoolchildren in Fife.

Yet the school playground houses a mobile cabin that has been superfluous to requirements for 18 months, costing an unnecessary �13,914.

Including this in cost per child figures was unfair.

Also, whilst it may be easy to calculate the direct costs allocated to the education budget, the high attainment level at Dunshalt pays dividends back in areas that will never appear as a gain in Dunshalt's "cost per child" figures.

To focus on cost per child ignored the wider long-term benefits.

If there had been a real willingness to preserve and develop quality education then all problems could have been overcome and what better reason was there than this.

Last month, my eight-year-old said: "Mummy, I didn't want to leave school today because it was so good."