Pupils who have already lost three weeks of lessons now face being crammed into classrooms normally used by half the number of children.

The extra disruption at Cottingley Village Primary School comes because work is beginning on removing asbestos from the main Cottingley Moor Road site. Seven extra classes are now being taught at the smaller School Street site until the end of this week.

The news received a furious reaction from parents already angered by plans to close the school for an extra two weeks at Easter to allow the whole school to move to the main site under the reorganisation.

In a letter to parents, head teacher Christina Briggs said: "The contractors have assured us that there is no risk to staff or children. But I am not happy with this arrangement and have taken the decision to remove all staff and children to enable this to take place safely."

Mrs Briggs added that parents unhappy with the temporary arrangements had her permission to keep their children off school. She said the measures were being taken to prevent any further closure of the school. It also opened a week late in September because of the reorganisation.

Alison Wright, whose 10-year-old daughter Suzanne is about to take her SAT tests, said: "I am absolutely outraged I just feel the school has lost sight of why it is here - to teach our children.

"Where are they going to teach these extra classes? How will there be room? They must have known about the asbestos before. Why couldn't the contractors have gone in over the school holidays?"

Mrs Briggs said the latter question was something she had asked the builders herself. But she said: "We will have classrooms for them all, we will have lessons for them all and there will be dinners for them all. It is business as usual, just on a different site."

She said parents were being allowed to keep their children off school because, if they were unhappy, she wanted to offer them an alternative.

A spokesman for Bradford Council's managing partners in the reorganisation, Bovis Lend Lease, said: "The decision to carry out this work was taken with the agreement of the head. It is preparation work only and there was never any question of the children's work being disrupted. As far as we are concerned we were happy for the children to remain on the site this week."