Every year, the first assembly at Dunbeg Primary starts the same way. Everyone in the school - children and staff, more than 100 people in all - gathers in the centre of the dining hall. A couple of older pupils then unfurl a ball of wool or string, and walk carefully around the group until everyone is wrapped within it.

The message, says Sine MacVicar, who was headteacher until her retirement this summer, is this: “We’re all in this together.” Or, put another way, “I like to see myself not as the boss, but as part of the school team.”

MacVicar won the Lifetime Achievement prize at this year’s Tes Schools Awards, after 44 years - her entire career - at the school, and a quarter of a century as its head.

She has had her picture taken with former pupils who span three generations of the same family, and there are teachers who are now applying lessons that they learned from MacVicar as children.

Deirdre MacFarlane is one such former pupil. She remembers a day 38 years ago, when she was in her first year of primary school and felt “distraught” at being late. She remembers, equally vividly, the warmth of MacVicar’s reassurances that everything would be OK.

Alice Hoon, a pupil-support assistant at Dunbeg, says: “She’s like a magnet: it’s like this ripple that goes through the school, a wave of excitement - kids just love her.”

Egalitarian ethos

Staff and parents tell you that MacVicar has imbued both kindness - the school walls are peppered with messages about caring for others - and egalitarianism in the school.

All staff, teaching and otherwise, wear the same buttoned blue T-shirts with red school badge. When MacVicar introduced prefects, she decided that a hierarchical system felt wrong and that all senior pupils should take on the role.

She says the most important quality in a headteacher is being caring and approachable. “It’s not just about learning - it’s about looking after everybody, making sure that everybody is included and gets as much of your time as you can give,” she explains.

Colleagues point to the high number of children with additional support needs whose families are drawn to the school, while new headteacher Marny McCulloch has been struck by the “warmth” and “sense of community” left by her predecessor.

MacVicar impressed upon staff the importance of work-life balance and channelling their efforts into class time. “I don’t want anybody to be sitting up at all hours of the night doing wonderful planning…You can have amazing plans but it’s [still] not happening in the classroom,” she says. “It’s so important that all your energy’s going into teaching and caring for these children”.

MacVicar also tried to instil a steely determination in staff and pupils - her hero is tennis player Andy Murray because “he never gives up”. And she was eager to underline the importance of mastering the traditional fundamentals of literacy and numeracy.

But she has little nostalgia for her 1960s schooldays, when children were “frightened in school”, teachers “ruled by iron” and the belt was an omnipresent threat. Instead, she says that pupils should be “bouncing into school, very happy”.

Colleagues highlight MacVicar’s singular compassion and dedication outside of the school walls. There are tales of her sitting at the bedside of a colleagues’ dying loved one, of taking on childcare for families struggling to cope with bereavement. Principal teacher Nicola Bichard says: “She’s just so compassionate - parents feel like they could ask her for the world and she would give that to them.”

A typical week might have seen MacVicar staying at school until 5pm, then spending her evenings volunteering in a hostel for Oban High School pupils from the islands, or leading local Brownie and Girl Guide groups.

Weekends have often seen her shuttling between childminding, church - where she is an elder - and supporting pupils in sports teams or in performances at the Mòd, the annual celebration of Gaelic culture.

The Tes Schools Awards judges noted “there are few whose lives she has not touched” in the wider community - reflected by the recent decision to name a new Dunbeg street as MacVicar Court.

“In the gate with a smile!” MacVicar would say to children as she waited outside each morning, in all weathers. She’s known for her catchphrases, also including “Over the head and start again!” (accompanied by a swish of her hand to encourage pupils to put their worries behind them) and “Everything we do, we give it laldy [do it enthusiastically]!”

‘So much energy’

Jennifer Graham, an ASN (additional support needs) assistant at the school, says: “There is an oomph about her - so much energy. She’s on the go all the time and it’s all for the good of the children.”

MacVicar always knew everybody’s name, says Graham - including pupils, parents, “people who were at the school 25 years ago, grandparents she’s only met once before”. At Graham’s wedding, the headteacher sang The Skye Boat Song in front of a packed church, in her blue school T-shirt and a school choir of 30.

MacVicar remained a classroom teacher until her last day at Dunbeg - usually working with four- and five-year-olds, in the hope of instilling good habits and feelings about school from the start.

But she also liked to roam. “I’d very rarely be in my office - I was probably doing this job completely wrongly,” she laughs. Logan Watson, a P7 pupil, recalls MacVicar visiting his class “every 10 minutes” because she cared so much.

Staff describe Dunbeg Primary as “like a training school”, where people at all stages of their career are encouraged to further themselves. The school provides work experience for Oban High pupils who are thinking about going into teaching, and teachers are often doing additional qualifications in areas such as childcare.

Janitor Tom Sharp, one of many longserving staff members, is an outdoors enthusiast. MacVicar encouraged him to step well outside traditional duties by, for example, taking children on kayaking trips. “Having Sine as a boss has enabled me to do activities that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do otherwise,” he says. “I know that she would go the extra mile for me so I would always go the extra mile for her.”

Others talk of MacVicar’s determination that pupils would not be affected by the rippling budget cuts following on from the global financial crash nearly a decade ago. They look at the school budget, then at the wealth of resources around them - and can only conclude that their headteacher regularly dipped into her own pocket.

Similarly, Bichard says, MacVicar underlined the importance of staff “putting on an act for children”. She emphasised that even if you were having a bad day underneath, until “reality hit again at half past three”, pupils should not be affected and should enjoy the same stable and caring environment every day.

MacVicar’s approach has worked, according to this assessment of Dunbeg Primary by P7 (final year of primary school) pupil Logan: “Even though it’s a small place, there’s a lot of love in it.”

@Henry_Hepburn