DAD did his homework, his son got results. Now James Puxty wonders what happens next.

The Puxtys could be any family with children at one of the county's small rural schools. Four-year-old Ethan Puxty goes to King's Caple primary, which has just 44 pupils.

He goes there because it's what mum and dad want. The couple are quite open about that. In dad's day the number of children at King's Caple could have been crammed into a single class, with four classes to a year. Ethan was going to have better.

The Puxtys came to Herefordshire - James works in corporate communications - from the south-east 12 years ago seeking a fresh way of life.

Hereford-born Ethan was a quiet child. Mum and dad wanted a school that could bring him out of his shell without smashing it. King's Caple, just a few school run minutes away from the family home at Fownhope, was ideal, small but big on qualities like ethics and support. There, an "extremely" confident and polite Ethan has started to emerge.

They've got nothing against Fownhope. Ethan's sister has just started pre-school there. It's just that King's Caple seemed right for Ethan.

So why are the Puxtys worried? Maths makes them anxious. Schools like King's Caple could close as the number of primary pupils in the county plummets - as few as 12,000 of them are expected by 2016.

With Whitehall now basing direct schools funding on pupil numbers, education in Herefordshire faces its most testing time since the 1970s when many schools were lost.

Three more - Wormbridge, Hope-under-Dinmore and Brilley - have already failed the latest test because their numbers didn't add up. Anyone involved in schools here knows more may have to go so there is enough money to share among those left.

Despite regularly posting strong results, Herefordshire's schools are now the third worst funded in the country, a figure that breaks down to about £3,500 per pupil. Just keeping up current subsidies sees small schools operating at the expense of their larger counterparts.

Because of this, education bosses put the future for every school in the county under review last year.

In April, Don Rule, Herefordshire's Council's former cabinet member for childen's services, told the Hereford Times that keeping small schools open "at all costs" was no longer realistic. He urged his successor to fight for a change to the policy of only closing such schools as a last resort.

The review won't see any more schools shutting in the near future, but alternatives are being talked about - including clusters of neighbouring schools sharing staff and resources or federated schools with one headteacher managing a cluster of two, three or even four. These, though, are seen as difficult to achieve effectively in Herefordshire, where schools are spread widely apart.

More groundbreaking projects combine rural primary and secondary schools on single sites, a concept already being explored at Wigmore.

With so much uncertainty, parents are now worried about small school places before they go looking for them. Why send your child to school that might not survive beyond the next few years?.

"But it's also a self-fulfilling prophecy," says James. "The irony is, if fewer parents think this way more children might attend the smaller schools, and give them a better chance of staying open.

"Parents don't have to send their children to King's Caple, or any other small school, but by including them in the decision process, they give the childen greater choice and options. To discount a small school on the basis of a perceived threat and nothing else would seem rather short-sighted."

The review reveals a kind of Catchment 22, with most reasonably sized rural schools having to rely on pupils from outside their area to keep numbers up anyway. This is something supporters of an alteration in policy are quick to cite as a reason why that change should come - what the youngsters might lose in smaller classes they would gain in wider social interaction.

To James, this can't be considered clear cut, especially if the argument - when applied to schools - holds money and value equally important.

"Common sense would seem to dictate that children will have more of the teacher's time in a small school, bullying is more transparent and the interaction of pupils across a wider age range is a neccessity rather than an expectation," he says.

James is not speaking in isolation, King's Caple has already started its fight for survival. The recruits to this fight - from the ranks of parents, guardians, teachers and governors alike - are not naively brushing the financial pressures aside. They want to see what makes their school special taken into account as prospective parents - and ultimately Herefordshire Council - consider its worth.

But James says the fight is about much more than keeping King's Caple open. "I want King's Caple and many other fantastic, smaller rural schools to flourish and continue providing caring nuturing schooling. At the risk of sounding evangelical, I think more children should be given the chance to share in something that really is genuinely special. Not every campaign of this kind wins, but not everyone loses," he says.