This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter.

As of this week, councillors in Dumfries and Galloway have approved a new Learning Estate Strategy and a Rural Schools Strategy.

The former includes a set of ‘School Model Principles’ which are supposed to underpin the strategy itself. There are, according to this document, ten in total, covering the state of the building and grounds, travel distances, class and teacher numbers, occupancy, adaptability, community use, and provision of key facilities.

It all looks, at first glance, fairly comprehensive, but when you start to really think about some of these ‘principles’, problems – or at least potential problems – start to arise pretty quickly.

Campaigners in the area have been speaking to me for more than two years now about their fears for rural education in Dumfries and Galloway, and some of them believe that the approach and assumptions of the current School Model Principles are, ultimately, an attack on small schools in rural areas.

So, I took these principles to the council and asked a direct question about all but one of them, hoping to clarify exactly how each one applies in practice.

Here are the principles in question, lifted directly from the council’s own document, and – for the purposes of my 1000-word limit – summaries of the questions I submitted:

1. Pupils should be educated in facilities which are rated at least category B for each of Condition and........

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