So much has been going on in the world recently that a reader of this column could be forgiven for not having noticed an item that will very probably be of lasting significance to West Dorset.

What would make any such oversight all the more understandable is that the item in question was a government consultation paper. What, you may ask, could be a more boring class of thing than a government consultation paper?

And yet, this particular paper contained something that really ought not to bore us locally -- because it indicated that the formula for the funding of schools might be changed in future. The aim is to reflect more fairly the true costs of schooling around the country. And the paper contained the suggestion that the new formula might specifically acknowledge the additional costs faced by rural schools.

For the last twenty years, I have never ceased to hear complaints -- and have never had reason to doubt the justice of complaints -- about the unfairness of the school funding formulae that have applied for decades.

Of course, everyone knows that urban schools face some costs that we don't face in Dorset -- and that inner city schools face some challenges from which we are mercifully spared in Dorset. But can the discrepancies of cost really be as great as the disparities of funding per pupil would suggest? And can the disparities of funding really be taking account of the costs that rurality imposes?

These are questions that have been raised and discussed, without any satisfactory conclusion, since at least the mid 1980s.

Now, at last, this present consultation is opening the way to a new formula that may set matters on a fairer footing.