Thousands of children affected by Edinburgh school closures have returned to the classroom as uncertainty about the repair timescale continues.

A total of 7600 youngsters were displaced after 17 primary, secondary and special schools were shut on April 8 due to structural concerns.

Children from all but one secondary school had returned to the classroom by Tuesday, and all pupils will be back in classes by Wednesday.

Alternative arrangements include 16 temporary classrooms being installed at the Royal High School and 390 pupils from Firrhill High School being accommodated at Edinburgh Napier University's Craiglockhart campus.

For some pupils, the journey to school on Tuesday was considerably longer than usual, with pupils from Gracemount High in the south of the city being bussed eight miles to Wester Hailes Education Centre.

In Craigmillar, youngsters from Castleview Primary started classes at nearby Castlebrae High from Tuesday morning. They were piped into the building in a brief welcoming ceremony.

Castlebrae High principal Norma Prentice said teachers had been working "around the clock" to prepare the secondary for more than 200 primary pupils.

She said: "Initially it seemed like an impossible task. The rooms had been used as store rooms so there was a lot of rubbish to be cleared out and initially we thought we'd have to spread [the children] around the school, but once the rooms were cleared we managed to get them all into one wing. All the nursery pupils are in our family centre.

"It's taken a lot of preparation - staff have worked 24 hours around the clock to ensure the wing was ready for learning today. It's now a school within a school that is part of the whole community."

More than 70 buses have been contracted to shuttle children to their new classrooms.

The affected pupils have been moved to 61 alternative schools, while 655 teachers have been relocated to ensure disrupted pupils have some continuity.

Priority has been given to senior students, and the Scottish Qualifications Authority is liaising with the local authority as exams approach.

Council leader Andrew Burns has admitted the length of the disruption will not be known until the end of this week.

Structural faults of varying degrees were found at all 17 schools, which were built by the Edinburgh Schools Partnership under a PPP construction project.

Aberdeen's Robert Gordon University carried out checks at its £120m Miller-built campus after the problems came to light, but no faults were found.

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