Schools are always linked to communities, but the degree of that connection, and the way in which it manifests, can look very different from one part of the country to the other.

Think about what happens if a council wants to build a new school somewhere in the central belt. The new building needs to reflect the catchment areas to be served, and it needs to be internally equipped to meet the 21st Century needs of pupils. There can be some dispute over the specific parcel of land to be used (as is currently the case in East Dunbartonshire) and it’s common to hear concerns and complaints about things like traffic levels and parking.

But in some parts of Scotland, questions about education feel justifiably existential. In these locations, the stakes are much higher, because the choice could mean the difference between a community that survives and thrives and one that suffers, disperses and ultimately disappears.

And even that isn’t the whole story, because some of these areas have been so badly neglected by remote governments in Edinburgh and London that they have already experienced huge loss – and a school is one of the few tools we have available to reverse these sorts of declines.

It’s no surprise, then, to see that people on Mull are hugely concerned about plans for a new combined primary and secondary school somewhere on the island.

Right now they know that five sites are under consideration – but the council won’t say exactly where they are. What’s more, residents of Mull have been telling us that the council has done an awful job of engaging and informing people about this whole process, despite the fact that it will impact on their community for generations.

Why, one may ask, should children and families spend decades paying the price of that particular council failure?

That’s all bad enough, but the issues actually go even deeper.

Right now, the island’s only secondary school is in Tobermory, on the north coast, which is more than 90 minutes away (under the best of conditions) from Fionnphort in the south east. A round trip from there to the school and back would cover a distance of more than 100 miles. This means that children living in the southern part of the island are in fact sent off to boarding facilities in Oban for high school, and that is something that many on Mull are desperate to change.

The solution would be to build the new school somewhere near the middle of the island, but it’s not that simple, because the funding model underpinning this whole project operates on the expectation that new constructions will be ‘like-for-like’ replacements for what is already provided. But that would mean taking the primary school (which is combined with the high school and nursery services to create “a unique 2-18 island school) out of Tobermory, which is clearly absurd given that the village is by far the island’s main settlement.

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Demanding like-for-like replacements probably makes sense and works fine in most of Scotland, but it assumes that the status quo meets the needs of all communities.

If you think that assumption holds right across this country then you desperately need to get out and see more of it.

So what happens now? The timelines for the project are extremely tight, with the council talking about making a decision on a school location within weeks. That doesn’t look particularly reasonable given the complaints of community members, but a delay in and of itself isn’t really enough.

What Mull needs is a new secondary school that actually meets the needs of the people on Mull, not those in the council offices in Lochgilphead or the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.

That might mean that a different funding and logistical model is required.

If so, then that’s exactly what should happen.