ROMEO and Juliet, as every English student knows, is the story of the "pair of star-cross'd lovers", the most beautiful love story ever told and remembered by the romantic on days like this.

"It's the sense of belonging and of knowing it will always be there," says Worcestershire county councillor Di Rayner. "When it isn't there anymore, it's devastating, it's heart-breaking, it's cruel."

But she is not talking about splitting up with a lover, she is talking about schools.

Romance and school closures - not natural comparisons admittedly, but they provoke the same strong emotive words.

Just ask the parents, staff and governors at Warndon Infants' School in Worcester who are fighting for their school to keep its own identity "at the heart of the community".

Or the families whose children go to Malvern Hills Primary, hoping for a stay of execution rather than becoming an obsolete entry on the Friends Reunited website.

What campaigners mention time and again is the emotional impact a school's closure can have on children and the community as a whole. In fact, this was underlined when the public gathered to air their views over the looming closure of Malvern Hills. "Everybody knows that a community needs a heart," Heather Williamson told the Government's schools adjudicator Richard Lindley, speaking on behalf of Malvern's Chase High School and Poolbrook Church.

"I feel that for this community to lose this school it would be like ripping the heart out of it."

But why do school closures stir such strong feelings of the heart, evidenced in the battles the county council seems to fight almost every time it announces such a plan?

"Often the whole community can be centred on the school," explains Mrs Rayner, also the leader of Malvern Hills District Council. "The school becomes the focus of the whole community like the parish church or the village green. We make emotional connections with it. That's not a bad thing, it's something we all need."

Mrs Rayner has fought the closure of Malvern Hills Primary School every step of the way. Worcestershire County Council decided the school should close because of falling numbers, which coincided with poor performances in inspection reports. But Mrs Rayner says strong emotional attachment often gets overlooked.

"We all remember our school days and our favourite teacher, no matter how many Ofsteds or reports or paperwork there are - it's about the emotional ties.

"I think with all this chopping and changing, we're in danger of losing that feeling of commitment a school has to a community and

the commitment a community

feels towards a school. They (the authorities that decide to

close schools) have got to

recognise the school is at the heart of everything."

Mergers, let alone closures, provoke strong emotions. The retirement of long-serving headteacher Margaret Probett of Warndon Infants' School triggered plans for a merger with the juniors and a wave of parent and governor protest.

"One thing we were praised for in our Ofsted report was how our school was at the heart of the community," Warndon Infants' acting headteacher Julia Millwood says. "This is something that should not be forgotten."

Battles of school closures and mergers will be won and lost but Mrs Rayner explains why she feels it so deeply. "One of the most awful experiences of my life was when, at the age of 30 or so, I went back to my little primary school in Birmingham to discover it had been flattened. It was just devastating. I sat in my car on the side of the road and cried.

"It's devastating, it's cruel to close schools down."

Whether it is the end of a summer romance, a first kiss, or some of the most famous love stories in English literature, heartache is never far away. "Parting is such sweet sorrow," Juliet told Romeo.

Those who are fighting to keep their schools at the heart of their communities hope it won't all end in tears.