The difficulties that colleagues have wrestled with over that period include resolving the tensions that can exist between local decision making and national accountability, and, for many of us, a desire not to introduce a false division between the needs of pupils in a rural setting and those in an urban one.Colleagues from all parties are aware that, in rural communities, where small numbers are involved, pupil rolls can increase and decrease dramatically with the movement of only a few families in or out of an area or simply with the transfer...