Ken Muir is the recently retired chief executive of the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS). For the next six months, he has been given the task of shaping the planned reform of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and Education Scotland.

He talks to Tes Scotland about how he became convinced that the early years are key to closing the attainment gap, and explains why he believes education’s high public profile is damaging.

He also shares his admiration for Mary Berry’s ability to ice a French fancy - and reveals that he used to be a baker.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

I went to Dunoon Grammar School (in Argyll and Bute) and I was very fortunate because I had some really brilliant teachers. Robin Jenkins, the author, who died a few years ago, actually taught me English, and I had a very interesting and brilliant maths teacher, Mrs Anderson, who it turned out was one of the Bletchley Park [code-breaking] girls during the Second World War. 

The teacher who stands out most was Ian Sutherland, my Latin teacher. He latterly moved up to Aberdeenshire to become a headteacher, but died a few years ago, sadly. He was memorable to me because he and his wife Christine and daughter Sheona were hugely committed to orienteering. They went out of their way pretty much every weekend between about September and Easter to take us on trips and to competitions. He did so much that I actually won the Scottish Schools Orienteering Championships one year, I think in S5. 

Dunoon Grammar won lots of school championships and it was fundamentally down to his enthusiasm. Every teacher is remembered by someone; I don’t think there’s any doubt of that, but for me, Ian Sutherland is right up there - he was an incredible man.

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

I enjoyed school but I was a very middle-of-the-road pupil. I was very fortunate in that Dunoon Grammar was the only secondary school serving the whole of Cowal and it meant we had a lot of children who came from the likes of Islay, Tighnabruaich and some of the very remote areas of Argyll. Also, at the time, the US Polaris base was there so there were lots of Americans at school with me.

I had a photograph when I was in P3 and there were 42 children in the class, and 21 of those were American. And when I was in P5 at Kirn Primary School, I was taught by an American teacher. When I think back on it, that exposure - because I had friends who were black Americans, Latino Americans - made quite an impression on me and my thinking around equalities issues, for example. Although you don’t realise it at the time, it forms your values, attitudes and beliefs. 

The worst thing? It was a shinty school, and I hated it. It was played on blaes pitches for a start, and it was always impossible not to fall or be hurt in some form. I was never good at shinty, but a lot of the students played shinty for the big semi-professional teams. They were very, very good, and you usually came off with very bruised shins and hands and arms, as well as skinned knees.

I used to hate that block of time. It was always winter and there was no way out of it - you just had to grin and bear it.

3. Why do you work in education?

Probably the same reason that most teachers decide to go into education: they see the impact it can have on the lives of children and young people. I actually loved my subject at school, geography, and it was one way of continuing that love.

Believe it or not, I was actually a Sunday school teacher while I was still at school, and I really enjoyed the engagement with the children and the feedback that you got from them - it seemed a natural progression, eventually, to go into teaching.

4. What are you proudest of in your career and what do you regret?

I’ve been really fortunate - I’ve had lots of opportunities and huge variation in my career and, if I’m proud of anything, it’s that I’ve had a wide variety of roles with some degree of influence.

The one thing that stands out for me - which I think there are still vestiges of in Scottish education - is being involved in writing the prospectus for new community schools. Fundamentally, it was about creating schools as a one-stop shop, not just for education but for social services as well. I often think that was the forerunner to the whole children’s services agenda that we now have in Scotland. It helped to demonstrate to society that teachers can’t do it all themselves.

Like many teachers, you know you have had a positive influence on the progress and development of past pupils. I always felt that was a big plus of being a teacher - knowing you were having that impact. And I suppose that’s one of my big regrets - I can still think today of young people who I would have liked to have done more for. In a roundabout way, that’s one of the reasons why I took on this opportunity to be involved in this first part of the reform exercise: I think the reform is partly about how we better serve these children and young people.

5. Who would be your colleagues in your ideal school staffroom?

I’ve gone for folk who I am interested in myself; they are not necessarily educationalists. I am in awe of Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent. To put yourself in the kind of situations that she does, reporting on all manner of crises and disasters - I think she’s incredible. I’m sure she’s got lots of interesting stories that never come out in reports, so I think she would be great company in the staffroom.

From my geography background, the travel writer Simon Reeve because, again, the places he has visited and the situations that he has found himself in would be fascinating.

As a former baker - during and immediately after university - I am totally captivated by the skills of Mary Berry. I remember watching her on one programme icing French fancies. To get the icing on the entire cake to the same level of thickness, you have to be pretty skilled to do it - I never came anywhere near matching that.

I have also picked someone still in the education system and that is Peter Gilchrist, headteacher of Robert Burns Academy and the Barony Campus in Cumnock. Peter is probably the best teacher I came across in my entire career and one of the funniest. He was in my department at Greenwood Academy, in Irvine, and was an absolute joker in the staffroom. He was just the life and soul - every staffroom needs a Peter Gilchrist.

6. What would you say are the best and worst aspects of our schools system today?

One of the best is the quality and the commitment of the teaching workforce in Scotland. I know there is variation, inevitably - I mean, there are 77,000 folk on the [General Teaching Council for Scotland] register. But I don’t think the teaching profession gets sufficiently well recognised. It is hugely undervalued and underrated.

The worst aspect is that education has too high a profile. I’m not saying education is not important - of course it is; a large chunk of money is given to supporting education, so accountability is important. But I just think that it’s an area of society that is too easily knocked. You’ve heard it said that “everybody is an expert in education because everybody has been to school”, but I think there is a huge lack of understanding about how difficult it is to be a teacher. 

What is said and written about education in Scotland doesn’t fully recognise that, and it sometimes leads to quite misinformed comments and views. Scottish education is certainly not perfect but I think, as the [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)] report recently said, there are lots of strengths.

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

The late Bill Cochrane, the headteacher at Greenwood Academy, took a real risk appointing me, as a fairly inexperienced teacher, to be principal teacher so, to some extent, he was an influence. 

But I think [former senior chief inspector] Graham Donaldson, probably more than any other. He was on the panel that interviewed me for an [inspectorate] post; he appointed me as an assistant chief inspector and then as a chief inspector, and he gave me, along with Douglas Osler [also a former senior chief inspector], a lot of opportunities. 

I worked with him directly but it’s also what he has done - I would point to Teaching Scotland’s Future [the 2011 report on teacher education] as one of the seminal documents in Scottish education over the past 10 to 12 years; then there’s the work he has done for the OECD and the work he is doing in Wales. So he hasn’t just influenced my career and mentored me but, in terms of Scottish education overall, he has been one of the key individuals.

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

When I was in the inspectorate, I had responsibility for early years inspection and I became an absolute convert. I would reinstate teachers in all nurseries and early years settings because the old adage about the most important years in a child’s life being up to the age of five is absolutely true, and I think a higher profile, more resource and recognition of the early years is a way in which, ultimately, we will show major change in closing the attainment gap.

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

Schools have already begun to change as a result of what’s happened over the past two years [of Covid]. I see schools being more integrated, with primary and secondary on the same campus trying to get as much of a seamless journey as possible, for example. 

Inevitably, technology will play a more significant role, too. The trouble with technology is it doesn’t always lead to better learning, but I could imagine more of a hybrid model, where some of the lessons are online and not necessarily delivered by teachers in your school. That has the potential to open up learning and more bespoke pathways for young people.

10. Which person do you think has made the most difference to schools in the past year?

Quite selfishly, I think the work GTCS did to support teacher health and wellbeing had a huge impact on the teachers who engaged in it. But I would plump for Professor David Smith, the dean of the University of Aberdeen’s school of education. 

We knew right from the outset of Covid that managing student placements and getting students and probationers appropriate experience was going to be a real challenge. 

The main person doing a lot of the work behind the scenes was David Smith - the guidance produced for students and student placements was largely of his creation.

The jury is still out because, clearly, students over the past couple of years have not had the same experience [as they would have previously], but David truly is one of the unsung heroes who kept the show on the road during impossibly difficult times. 

Interview by Tes Scotland reporter Emma Seith