While it may be a fact that school populations have diminished in some areas and costs have increased, it is also a fact that once you withdraw infrastructure from a town or region, such as the post office, medical centre and school, the town will eventually die.

Families are not going to settle in a region lacking basic services.

That the Fairbrother inquiry did not regard the community impact of schools as an Education Department priority, but chose to highlight the $23 million annual cost of declining student numbers, is fair warning that regional communities have an almighty fight ahead of them.

In some ways you can view the self-assessment process as a way of having communities close themselves.

If the criteria involves the maths of student numbers and projects, but not other social factors, the conclusions become limited at best and pre-determined at worst.

At least the government is giving communities a chance to beg for mercy.

It is ominous that the one-off plan to close 20 schools, revealed in a three-line statement in last year's state budget will now be an annual event where every public school in the state will have to review its viability.

Schools should be reviewing their progress as a matter of course, but this new element of uncertainty for students, their families and staff is palpable.

While the new process involves a belated focus on consultation the government ought to consider the lessons of history and how previous governments progressively closed or merged a large number of schools, without having to line them all up at once against a wall for execution.

Education Minister Nick McKim's plan still smells of budget cuts and savings, with the plight of communities a lower priority.

It is instructive to know what declining school populations cost the state, but you have to wonder if a first-class education system is being sacrificed on the altar of financial incompetence from previous years.