WITH the ink not yet dry on the Scottish Government’s Next Steps document on the future of school governance the flak is already starting to fly.

Under the policy, headteachers will be given a statutory responsibility to improve standards alongside new powers to hire staff and shape the curriculum.

In addition, the power to improve education has been removed from councils and placed with up to seven so-called regional collaboratives.

The first salvo was fired last week by council umbrella body Cosla who said bypassing councils meant there was no longer any meaningful local democratic accountability for education.

Yesterday, it was the turn of academics and educationalists to question the rationale behind new regions, which were comprehensively opposed by nearly everyone who took part in a recent consultation.

Stirling University’s Professor Walter Humes views the new regions as an “overarching bureaucratic structure”.

Never knowingly out-quoted, educational consultant Keir Bloomer described them as “compulsory, authoritarian, unwanted, bureaucratic and hierarchical”.

All this is in stark contrast to the view of Education Secretary John Swinney that the regions will be collaborative bodies in which council professionals and groups like national schools quango Education Scotland can work together.

When asked last week about the apparent centralising aspect of the new structures Mr Swinney was adamant that was not the intention.

He told The Herald: “They are not going to be supervisory boards. They are improvement collaborations which bring together expertise to make sure we provide seamless improvement to schools.”

So how have we got to a situation so soon where such diametrically opposed views of the new regions are being taken?

The key is the creation of a government-appointed director within the new bodies who will report to the chief inspector of schools at Education Scotland.

Mr Swinney said he wanted the directors to ensure improvement was being driven more consistently across the country in line with national objectives, such as closing the attainment gap.

That is not how it is being seen. Instead, critics argue what has been created is an undemocratic, centralised command and control structure which bypasses council education departments and provides a direct line of communication on progress to the Education Secretary.

But that is not the whole story. As Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, points out there is a genuine problem.

Council cuts have led to the scrapping of quality improvement officers who used to support schools and many local authorities no longer have a dedicated director of education.

The new bodies could be seen, like the former Strathclyde Region, as a valid way to improve support, but a major stumbling block thus far is confusion over what their role is.