Scottish Government agrees U-turn over controversial regional school plans

However, under the agreement councils will be expected to demonstrate the new arrangements are working for the benefit of schools and that headteachers are being adequately supported.

The deal, which is expected to be approved by the Cosla leadership today, comes after widespread concern over Mr Swinney’s plans for new regional bodies to support school improvement.

Announced earlier this year, the new “regional collaboratives” were intended to provide more consistent support to schools across council boundaries.

However, they deliberately sidelined council officials and democratically-elected education committees because they were to be run by independent directors reporting to the chief inspector of schools at Education Scotland.

The move provoked accusations that a key plank of education was being taken out of local authority control. There was also concern it centralised the running of schools.

The Herald understands a deal has now been struck between Mr Swinney and Stephen McCabe, Cosla’s education spokesman, which would see the power of regional directors significantly reduced.

Under the new proposals council leaders would appoint individuals to the post of “regional lead officer” in the new collaboratives.

Officers would be expected to report to councils on progress as well as providing updates to Education Scotland.

The proposal is similar to a plan agreed by the leaders of a number of councils, including Glasgow, who are part of the West Partnership.

Mr Swinney said: “We are having very good discussions with local government on all of these issues and I am very pleased with the way those discussions are developing.

“I think the West Partnership contribution is an interesting model to explore and we are having those very productive discussions. We are not at the conclusion of those, but we are making good progress.”

A Cosla spokesman said: “Both Scottish Government and local government share the same ambitions for our young people. We are fully committed to making Scottish education the best it can be.

“On education governance, our local government officers and civil servants have been working constructively together to achieve the best possible solutions for children and families.

“There has also been a very positive and constructive working relationship between Mr McCabe and Mr Swinney.”

Further detail of the compromise is contained in a Cosla paper discussed at a recent meeting of its Children and Young People Board. The paper contains details of the six “collaboratives” through which Scotland’s 32 local authorities will combine to support schools.

These comprise the Northern Alliance, the Tayside Collaborative, the West Partnership, the South West Collaborative, the South East Collaborative and the Forth and Almond Valley Collaborative.

The paper states: “Each local authority in Scotland will belong to a collaborative grouping based on local assessment of where the most meaningful work can be undertaken on a partnership basis.

“The formal accountability for education and performance will remain with individual local authorities in line with statutory duties.

“A regional co-ordinator or lead officer will be appointed from among the existing chief education officers ... forming the collaborative.

“The regional co-ordinator will continue to be line-managed by the chief executive or relevant officer of the employing authority.

“They will report on the progress of the collaborative against the agreed plan to the chief executives and education conveners as well as the chief executive of Education Scotland.”

Analysis - Andrew Denholm

IT would be fair to say plans for regional collaboratives have not been the most popular of recent policies from the Scottish Government.

Nearly everyone who took part in a consultation on the future direction of school education disagreed with the concept from the off.

And when John Swinney, the Education Secretary, decided to press on regardless concern turned to anger.

The main bone of contention was not that support to schools should be improved by collaboration across council boundaries.

Rather the issue was that a new post of regional director was to be created reporting not to councils, but to the chief inspector of schools at Education Scotland.

Council umbrella body Cosla was clear this effectively removed democratic accountability from school education because the link between officials and councillors was to be cut.

“The simple truth is there will be no meaningful local democratic accountability for education in Scotland,” a Cosla spokesman said at the time.

Keir Bloomer, an independent educational consultant who supports the idea of giving more power to schools, was equally clear the collaboratives would not work.

“They are compulsory, top-down, authoritarian, unwanted, bureaucratic and hierarchical. They reinforce all of the worst characteristics of the culture of Scottish education,” he said.

Another telling contribution was made by the Scottish Government’s own International Council of Education Advisers (ICEA).

In an interim report published this summer ICEA advised Mr Swinney against becoming too focussed on changing the structure of the education system when more important aspects were culture and capacity.

Its report said: “The Scottish Government should learn from existing attempts to formally share education services between local authorities, for example the Northern Alliance, and other forms of non-structural regionalisation that have been successful internationally.”

What always seemed odd about Mr Swinney’s approach was that he had previously been very supportive of the work of the Northern Alliance, a group of seven councils across Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and the Highlands and Islands.

But perhaps the most significant recent development came from an agreement by the leaders of the West Partnership of councils in and around Glasgow.

Senior SNP and Labour politicians in this grouping jointly agreed an approach that would deliver a model of regional collaborative that preserved the link with council officers and elected councillors.

Once this cross-party agreement had taken root it would have been counterproductive for Mr Swinney not to accept it as anything other than a pragmatic solution to a potential bloody battle with local government.

It has also given him what he wanted all along - better collaboration between councils to improve support for schools.