BUSES turned up at Fife schools empty this week after industrial action forced pupils back to online learning.

However the decision not to cancel all buses has been defended by Fife Council after one Press reader said around 15 vehicles attended at Queen Anne high despite the school doors being shut to youngsters.

They said it made "zero sense" and questioned the environmental impact of 15 diesel engines making unnecessary journeys to that one school.

READ MORE: Fife Council confirms school closures next week for strike action

Fife Council’s service manager for passenger transport services, Tony McRae, confirmed that school buses are still operating during the industrial action even though no pupils are on board.

“The main reason for this is that fare paying passengers can and do use these services and we wanted to avoid any confusion for the travelling public as to whether registered local services which normally only operate on a school day would run," he said.

“We therefore took the decision to operate all of the school services although we were happy to allow operators to reduce the number of buses operating along a route if they requested this, providing they catered for any fare payers.

“Contractually the council is paying for the school buses regardless of whether they operate or not so it gave us the assurance that if the strike is / was cancelled at short notice operators were already geared up to operate.”