Across Fife, families and communities have plenty of reasons to celebrate their local primary schools.
There are now mere weeks to go of Scotland’s summer holidays, with Fife’s schoolchildren set to return to the classroom for the 2025/26 school year around Monday, August 18. Among them will be a new group of pupils just setting out on their education journey, starting at primary school for the very first time.
To mark the occasion, we’re celebrating the local state-funded primaries across the Fife Council area that have excelled at helping their pupils get to grips with four essential academic skills; reading, writing, numeracy, and listening & talking.
We’ve used the most up-to-date performance data available on the Scottish Government’s primary schools dashboard (currently for the 2023/24 school year) - as well as some supplementary information from independent data site Scotland’s Data on a Map. More specifically, we’ve looked at ACEL (or Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels) figures showing the percentage range of each school’s pupils across three different year groups, who are achieving at the expected levels in each skill.
It is worth noting there are also many other ways to measure what kind of learning environment a school may be - and having high rates of pupils reaching these targets is but one sign that a primary school is doing its job well. Pupil results can also vary from one year to the next, based on all sorts of factors.
Here were the 21 Fife schools that came out on top:
5. Balmullo Primary School
This is a primary school in the village of Balmullo, also near St Andrews. In the 2023/24 academic year, 80-90% of its pupils were achieving at the expected level in numeracy and writing, while over 90% met the other two skills targets. | Google
6. Capshard Primary School
Capshard is a primary school in Kirkcaldy. In the 2023/24 academic year, 80-90% of its pupils were achieving at the expected level in numeracy and writing, while over 90% met the other two skills targets. | Google
7. Kingsbarns Primary School
This is a primary school in Kingsbarns, on the eastern coast of Fife between St Andrews and Crail. In the 2023/24 academic year, 80-90% of its pupils were achieving at the expected level in reading and writing, while over 90% met the other two skills targets. | Google
8. Milesmark Primary School
Milesmark is a primary school in Dunfermline. In the 2023/24 academic year, 80-90% of its pupils were achieving at the expected level in numeracy and writing, while over 90% met the other two skills targets. | Google