From school closures and the move to remote learning, to the cancellation of exams and the still-evolving replacement assessment model, Scottish secondary teachers have had their fair share of challenges during Covid. So it is perhaps no surprise that Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, is reluctant to identify just one person who has made the biggest difference to education in 2020.

He also speaks about his own schooldays in London’s East End with a talkative history teacher, reveals why former pupil Dizzee Rascal was a force to be reckoned with if he got bored, and how his time as a trade union official in Northern Ireland - where he still lives - led to one of his proudest achievements, but also one of his biggest regrets.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher?

It was a history teacher called Seamus O’Mahoney. He was the first person I ever knew who was also called Seamus.

I was living in the East End of London, in Bethnal Green, and the school - Cardinal Griffin School - was in Poplar in Tower Hamlets, where Call the Midwife is supposed to be set.

He just had such an enthusiasm for his subject. He loved talking about history, so, as a class, we were quite crafty and we would encourage him to talk. We felt like we weren’t working because we weren’t doing as much writing, but we all passed.

He was only in his mid-twenties and was my form tutor as well. Being that bit younger, he understood us a bit better than the older teachers. When I qualified as a teacher, I went back to work at my old school as head of design and technology and he was still there.

2. What were the best and worst things about your time at school?

It was a tough old school and not many people stayed on to do exams. It was the early 1970s. The year [group that came] after me was forced to stay on in school a year longer, until age 16, because of the ROSLA (raising of the school-leaving age). I loved school and learning, and always did well academically. I was very good at maths and the technical subjects, which I ended up teaching, but I also loved history.

It wasn’t an academic school, it was about real life, so to speak. Some youngsters grew up quicker than they should have. Some, who were quite able, had to go out and earn money for the home. My father totally objected to me doing any work outside of school. All the others were working in the markets and doing all sorts of things, but my father was adamant that education was the most important thing. When I was 16 or 17, I got a Saturday job working in a wholesale tobacconist shop but he sat me down and said he would rather give me the money.

He and my mother had come over from Tipperary in the 1950s. He was a labourer working in the tunnels in London - the Underground and that sort of thing - and they saw the value of education.

The worst thing about school was the bullies. I started fighting at a young age but I was never winning, so when I was 13, I realised I had to avoid it and learn how to get on with people. That’s stood me in good stead ever since.

3. Why did you choose to work in education?

I was the eldest of six siblings and three of us became teachers. I remember going with my mother to a careers interview and the careers teacher said: “Nobody in this school ever becomes a teacher”, and that I needed to be more realistic and go for an apprenticeship or something like that. My mother nearly fell off her chair: when you come from an Irish Catholic family, becoming a priest is top of the list, but she was willing to take teacher.

4. What are you most proud of in your career and what is your biggest regret?

I was working as a regional official for the NASUWT in London and went to Northern Ireland in 2005 for a few weeks, when the union there needed a bit of TLC. A few weeks became three months and then the post of senior officer came up, and I ended up working there until 2013. I still live in Northern Ireland now. I usually spend Monday to Friday in Scotland and come home at the weekends, but I’ve been at home for a year now because of the pandemic.

What I’m most proud of, from that period, is that we managed to establish a direct working relationship with the education minister in Northern Ireland. Before that, unions were doing their job, and lobbying government officials and the like. But we got all the education unions involved in the discussion about government education policy - we wanted to be in at the beginning, before the government announced things. That was a big change, from being a lobby group to being a partner.

The other thing that makes me feel proud is the people from the East End [of London], who I came across during my own teaching career, who have gone on to do well. Dizzee Rascal was in my class when he was about 15 (we knew him as Dylan Mills). He did the rounds of the schools in the East End because they didn’t want to exclude him, so they moved him from one school to another to give him a fresh start. A lot of teachers working in the East End at that time will have taught him at some point.

If he was interested in doing something, he would, but if he wasn’t, there was no point keeping him there - he would just do something to get out of the class. He could walk into a workshop, get a chisel and start cutting up the table because he was bored and didn’t want to be there any longer. But it was the school I was working at - Langdon Park School - that got him into music and worked with him.

Alex Scott, the sports presenter and commentator who used to play for England’s woman’s football team, was also at that school. She was very determined and motivated, and used to tell people like Dizzee Rascal to sit down and be quiet. I taught her all the way through school. She wasn’t a forceful character, she would just say to the others: “I’m here to learn, I don’t want to mess around.” She actually interviewed Dizzee Rascal for The One Show and they talked about their schooldays.

There are always things you would like to change but we all learn from the experiences we’ve been through. Leaving Northern Ireland before we could move towards one education authority would be one [regret]. When I arrived, there were five boards: one that looked after the Catholic sector, one for the integrated sector, one for the grammar-school sector [and so on], and the aspiration was to have one body for everybody. One authority would mean everyone on the same teaching contracts. At the moment, if you work in the grammar schools, you are paid at different rates.

It would actually be a step towards breaking down the barriers between the different groups in Northern Ireland. Everybody believed if we wanted to change the culture, we had to start with the children and make education integrated. It will come in due course, but things take time in Northern Ireland.

5. Who would be your colleagues in the perfect staffroom?

The staffroom is probably the most important place in a school. In my experience, it was where people stopped being teachers and could relax.

When I started teaching down the Old Kent Road, at Ark Walworth Academy, they used to play cricket in the staffroom and there was a woman who would make tea for the teachers every morning at 8am, again at breaktime and at lunchtime - which meant everybody went to the staffroom. Now schools have their own department or staff areas, and that makes a school disjointed because there isn’t one place where everyone gets together.

Even if people stuck to their groups, [going to the staffroom] was still a chance to talk to each other and let off a bit of steam. You can come out of a class and be very frustrated, but then someone says: “Don’t worry about it. Come and sit down and have a cup of tea and we’ll chat about it.” A lot of things can be discussed around a pot of tea.

6. What do you think are the best and worst aspects of the schools system today?

Something Scotland has that other parts of the UK don’t is that all teachers in secondary are subject specialists. We all train as teachers in a particular subject but, in other parts of the UK, you don’t necessarily end up teaching that subject. My brother trained as a techie teacher but ended up spending half his time teaching maths. We want teachers to do what they’re good at instead of fudging it in a subject they’re not a specialist in.

The worst aspect is workload; it’s driving teachers away. You meet some teachers who have done 25 years and all they want to talk about is how to get out.

7. Your own teachers aside, who in education has influenced you the most?

One is the former deputy general secretary of the NASUWT, Jerry Bartlett. He was a true trade unionist and cared about everybody. It did not matter what the battle was, he would be there to support them. He’s retired but, only the other day, I received an email from him asking me to support teacher unions in Iraq.

8. If you became education secretary tomorrow, what’s the first thing you would do?

There should be a lead teacher for every subject in secondary; at the moment, the only way you can get promotion is to join management. And class contact time should be reduced to 20 hours a week. Those two go hand in hand: value the teacher and make sure they have time to do the job properly.

9. What will our schools be like in 30 years?

Obviously, technology will play a bigger role, lockdown proved that. The exam system as we know it will not be the same; the sitting in a hall for three hours. It will be about continuous assessment and there will probably be more computerised assessment. Teachers will be well-paid, high-class professionals and there will be a focus on teaching and learning, and not all the other stuff.

I think we will get to a point where we will see the optimum size of a secondary school being under 1,000 pupils. Once you get above 800, you don’t know the children as well; a big campus with 1,500 or 1,700 becomes a sea of faces.

10. Who do you think made the biggest difference to education in 2020?

It’s not one person, it’s the teachers on the ground who made education work in 2020 and kept it going. Lockdown has really shown their commitment. Teachers did a marvellous job delivering remote education and finding ways around all the barriers in front of them. They had to change everything about how they delivered lessons and dedicated huge amounts of time - as well as often using all their own equipment.

Interview by Tes Scotland reporter Emma Seith

This article originally appeared in the 26 March 2021 issue