The first impact of the change was felt yesterday, when council workers took industrial action as part of a national pay dispute.

Almost every school in the city was forced to close — on only the second day of term — but Claypotts Castle remained open because its support staff are employed by Discovery Education.

This is the consortium that is building the schools and taking on a 30-year contract to run them at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of £390 million.

Today, another three new primaries — St Andrews, Downfield and Craigowl — joined the list of schools to be opened as part of the public/private partnership deal.

Discovery Education is also responsible for their support staff, so like their colleagues at Claypotts Castle, they would not be expected join in any further strikes by council workers.

Next year another two primaries, Fintry and Rowantree, will open along with a new Catholic secondary, St Paul’s Academy. A replacement for Grove Academy is also being built in stages, with the first phase open now and the second to follow in 2009.

This means that for decades to come city schools will have a mix of privately and publicly employed support staff — so industrial disputes affecting one group may not affect the other.

That could see future strike action cause some schools to close while others remain open. However, this situation affects only support staff.

While Discovery Education is responsible for maintaining the new schools and providing services such as security, cleaning and energy management, the education department remains responsible for all teaching.

The teachers themselves will remain council employees, so any industrial action they might take in the future will affect all schools, depending on which union is striking and how many members it has at each school.

Scotland’s biggest teaching union, the EIS, warned at its conference in Dundee it was willing to ballot for strikes if councils did not make progress on reducing class sizes.