West Lothian is a diverse geographical area, with a mixture of communities - rural villages as well as urban towns, older boroughs such as Bathgate and Linlithgow and the New Town of Livingston. The council has an area of 427 square kilometres, it is situated between Glasgow and Edinburgh and has a population of 165,700. There are 82 publicly funded schools, including 66 primaries, 11 secondaries and 5 special schools. 25,765 pupils attend these schools, including 14,481 primary pupils, 11,096 secondary pupils and 188 special needs pupils.