Aberdeenshire Council has backed a proposal to build 175 homes at Leathan Fields in Portlethen.
This comes after a planning application for the area was refused in 2014 due to education capacity.
However, a second planning application was submitted in 2016 and on December 10, 2019, Kincardine & Mearns Area Committee agreed that the planning permission could be delegated to the head of planning and environment service as long as a number of conditions were met.
One condition was that the house in the application would be rezoned to Portlethen
Primary School or Fishermoss School.
The council has now proposed that the existing primary school catchment areas within Portlethen should be amended.
All existing pupils would continue their education at their current school and changes would only affect pupils moving into the newly-built 175 houses at Leathan Fields.
One negative impact noted in the report was that some pupils may have to travel to a zoned school instead of one nearest to them.
However, this would be less than two miles, with plans to create safe walking routes to school being identified and implemented.
Justifying the decision, the report read: “The Council wishes to support the delivery of the 175 houses, the negative impact of the increased journey time to school for this cohort of children is less than the negative impact to all pupils at Hillside School if the exercise does not take place.”