IT is inevitable that the reorganisation of schools in County Durham will be controversial.

It is inevitable that there will be closures and it seems highly likely that rural areas, where schools are smaller and the population is ebbing away, will suffer the hardest.

Even in urban settings, local schools - particularly primary schools - are the very heart of the community. As well as educating children, they serve as a focal point for coffee mornings, summer fetes and, increasingly, adult learning classes; their playing fields are often the only green spaces for running around on.

Many schools in Durham also date back to the end of the 19th century, so there is a huge store of family memories going back generations held in their bricks and mortar.

With so many other suburban and rural services - shops, post offices, banks, pubs and buses - disappearing, the loss of 30 or so schools in one county will hit hard.

Yet, the county council has to do something. It is currently carrying - and the local tax-payer is paying for - 12,000 spaces for children who do not exist and are unlikely ever to exist. This demands some kind of rationalisation which inevitably means unenviable decisions.

There is an opportunity here and the council appears keen to grasp it. A large proportion of Durham's schools were built in a different era of high ceilings and imposing brickwork. Not only are these decaying, but modern buildings would be far better suited to modern needs, and the concept behind these "education villages" where all the social services are brought together does make sense. This change, although unsettling, can be positive.

However, in drawing up its plans for change, the council must take into account the wider consequences that cannot be quantified in terms of cash saved by scrapping surplus educational places.

For instance, some ex-mining communities in Durham are only just surviving. Even if a spanking new school is built ten or 15 miles down the road, the closure of their local school could be the factor that pushes them over the brink. Where the axe falls, communities could feel that this is Category D all over again.

And one of the greatest strengths of many schools is that they are community-orientated, that they are not so large that pupils get overwhelmed in them. The advances in facilities will be worthless if the new, centralised schools are seen as too remote.

It is going to be very difficult, even painful, for the council to come to the right conclusions that will benefit the next generation of Durham schoolchildren.