An application for funding to mark out a safe walking route for children when a split-site school opens in Oxford should be considered urgently, a councillor says.

Richard Tarver called for the city council's east area committee to prioritise consideration of a capital funding application by SS Mary and John Primary School in Hertford Street and Isis Middle School, Meadow Lane.

The schools are merging as part of the city schools shake-up and the new 400-pupil split-site SS Mary and John will open in September.

The children will have no safe place to cross the busy Iffley Road when moving between the sites.

Parents staged a walking protest earlier this month to put pressure on Oxfordshire County Council to install a crossing before the school opens.

At the moment, it has said it will only consider the request six months after the school opens.

Parents and teachers say a pelican crossing is essential to a proposed Rainbow Route, which involves placing plastic dinosaur footprints on the ground marking out the route, and road signs designed by children.

Mr Tarver, is backing the campaign for a pelican crossing and is supporting an application by the school governors for £4,070 city council funding for the Rainbow Route.

The Iffley Fields ward councillor said: "The provision of a Rainbow Route is time critical. It's affected by the issue of whether there's going to be a pelican crossing.

"If there is no pelican crossing, the Rainbow Route may have to have a different route."