IT wasn’t as radical as it could have been, but it still amounts to the most significant shake-up of Scottish state schools in the last 50 years.

One of the options available to Education Secretary John Swinney was the establishment of a Scottish version of free schools.

Parents from the closure-threatened St Joseph’s School, in East Dunbartonshire, had put forward a business case to run the primary themselves.

The Government took a long hard look at the plans, to the point where those involved believed they had a significant chance of success, but that hope was dashed yesterday as Mr Swinney ruled out self-governing schools.

However, new powers handed to headteachers to decide on the curriculum, appoint teaching staff and control a larger proportion of their budget are undoubtedly radical for Scotland where educational structures have remained largely unchanged for decades.

The most significant and daunting aspect is a new legislative responsibility on individual heads to raise attainment in their schools and close the attainment gap between rich and poor.

The Government hopes this new onus will transform standards by empowering headteachers to use their expert knowledge to reshape the school environment.

But there are risks too. We do not currently have enough headteachers and the prospect of having a statutory responsibility to improve performance in a climate of cuts may repel some.

What is already clear is that the biggest losers are councils, who will no longer be responsible for quality of education or improvement.

Instead their role will be reduced to a rump of administrative and support services alhtough they still retian the power to hire and fire headteachers.

The main responsibility for support and improvement has been passed to new regional bodies who will be led by an executive officer reporting directly to Scotland’s chief inspectors of schools.

Mr Swinney has said one of his biggest concerns is the variable level of support given to schools by some councils, but his response has been to bypass them all.

In the short-term, despite a legislative duty to collaborate, it is difficult to see how a bitter turf war between councils and regions can be avoided.