THE bitter wrangle over plans to merge one of the North-East's best-performing schools with one of its worst went to the heart of Tony Blair's education reforms.

Less than 24 hours after the Government's Education Bill required Conservative support to get through the House of Commons, peace broke out in the fight over the future of Hurworth and Eastbourne secondary schools in Darlington.

The long-running dispute was at odds with Mr Blair's promised freedom of choice for parents. How could choice be promised while parents in his own constituency were being told that their own successful school would have to be shut down and become part of an academy?

The resolution - that Eastbourne school applies to become an academy on its own while Hurworth school is allowed to remain in its village location - seems so simple that it is hard to understand why so much grief and uncertainty had to be endured in reaching it.

Nevertheless, it is a win-win resolution and one which we applaud. Darlington MP Alan Milburn has dug the borough council - and the Prime Minister - out of a hole which was in danger of caving in.

We do not question for a second that everyone involved in this unhappy saga - the local authority and the campaigners of Hurworth and Eastbourne - have been striving to do what they believed to be right.

What is needed now is a coming together of the local community to ensure that the end result is a fair deal and improved secondary education for all youngsters in the borough of Darlington.