By Mike Baker BBC education correspondent

Did the Budget signal a change in the government's attitudes to schools and colleges?

Are ministers about to trust schools and teachers to do their own thing? Is there about to be a bonfire of targets?

The decision to give more money directly to head teachers while, at the same time, cutting the number of jobs in the ministry could certainly be spun into a message which suggest that the days of "Whitehall knows best" are over.

It was certainly a bad day for the staff of the Department for Education and Skills: 31% of them will lose their jobs by 2008. That is 1,460 fewer headquarters civil servants.

If they could all be retrained as teachers - preferably of maths, IT or foreign languages - Gordon Brown would have made a useful contribution to solving the teacher shortage too.

Hand on the tiller

After last year's funding crisis in England's schools - when many teachers and school support staff lost their jobs - some may see this as pay-back time.

After all, it was the failure of Whitehall to model the funding settlement last year which led to the shortfalls in many areas.

A look at the targets set out in the full Budget papers shows there is still a very firm central government hand on the tiller

However the Whitehall spin would rather have you believe that this is more a case of the Department for Education seeing the light and recognising it cannot run 25,000 schools from the centre.

So the job losses at the department are portrayed as part of a new approach where intervening in every school and classroom in the country is abandoned in favour of simply setting the strategy and letting schools and teachers get on with the rest.

There may be something in this but a look at the targets set out in the full Budget papers shows there is still a very firm central government hand on the tiller.

And the cynics might add that cutting civil servant jobs was the only way left to finance the continued growth in school funding: a bit like chopping up the furniture to keep the fire going.

Devolution of responsibilities

However, if there are to be fewer government targets, and less central direction, it would follow that Whitehall would need fewer civil servants.

And another background paper issued as part of the Budget suggests this is the intent.

In his introduction to Devolving decision making: delivering better public services, Gordon Brown wrote that the government was now moving to the "second stage of modernisation and reform".

This would include "more radical devolution of responsibilities from Whitehall".

However, as the Conservatives have highlighted, it was this government which imposed all the targets in the first place.

And, despite the rhetoric, this is a government which will find it very hard to give up the habit of setting targets in order to drive the direction of education reform.

Targets, targets, targets

As the Treasury document shows, schools now face a total of 207 different targets, measures and "compliance requirements".

As the Conservatives put it, that is enough targets for every day of the school year with a few left over for the holidays.

And these are just the targets relating to central government and national bodies such as Ofsted.

In addition, one local education authority plan was found to have 307 targets. And this was said to be typical.

So Tony Blair's "education, education, education" has also mean "targets, targets, targets".

Will this change? Although we have now had the spending plans for education (cunningly brought forward to spice up an otherwise dull Budget), we have not yet had the full set of government targets that will accompany this extra money.

In Whitehall-speak, targets are known as Public Service Agreements or PSAs. In effect, they are the contracts the Treasury demands in return for extra cash.

The Budget papers indicate there will be at least five major areas of PSA targets:

• improving the life outcomes of children
• raising standards and tackling the attainment gap in schools
• ensuring all 19 year-olds are ready for skilled jobs or university
• reducing the adult skills shortage
• raising and widening participation in Higher Education.

All of this still sounds like a lot of targets and a lot of central direction

When these broad areas are turned into specific targets (as they will be in the spending review this summer) we will know exactly what is expected of schools and colleges.

They will include targets for the numbers getting five or more good GCSEs or their vocational equivalents, a reduction in the proportion of 16 to 18 year olds not in education, work or training, and the well-known target of getting 50% of young people into university.

All of this still sounds like a lot of targets and a lot of central direction. Maybe schools will be given more freedom to decide how they achieve these aims.

But there is no sign of the numeracy and literacy hours, tests for 11 year olds, and the core national curriculum becoming voluntary.

There may be a "lighter touch" approach to those schools who are doing well, and an encouragement to schools to help one another rather than be directed from town halls, but there is still going to be plenty of Whitehall direction.

There is no sign yet that the government is ready to strike the match to light the bonfire of targets for schools and colleges.