Larry Flanagan, a teacher of English, has been general secretary of Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, since 2012. Flanagan says his father, who was a shipwright, was determined that he and his brother (who also became a teacher) would not follow him into the shipyards. He saw education as the means to that end.

However, Flanagan has no patience for those who talk down the current system and hark back to the halcyon days of Scottish education. In the 1980s, pupils leaving school with no qualifications was “par for the course”, he says, and in the 1990s, the impact of poverty was “just shrugged off as ‘that’s life’”.

Now, there is a razor-sharp focus on equity, he says, but it’s taken a long time to get there - and there’s still work to be done.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

Mr Roddie, who was a history teacher, and I particularly like history. I was at a Catholic boys’ senior secondary - St Mirin’s Academy in Paisley - and I remember him explaining to us the Marxist view of history, in terms of the role of the people rather than history being about individuals.

I remember being quite struck by it; it seemed to me to make sense. But it was quite daring to say something like that and to talk in those terms, even though we read Animal Farm in first year in English. It was only when I went to university that I actually found out what Animal Farm was about. We just read it as a fairytale, and that was deliberate because it was a Catholic senior secondary and they didn’t want to talk about communism.

I also remember Mr McNellis - he was my English teacher and a register teacher - and he used to take one of the school football teams I played for. We used to call him Benny, I think because he looked like Benny Hill with his glasses.

He looked like an introverted English teacher but he used to come along to the football and he always had two packets of Opal Fruits so, at half-time, he gave all the boys a sweet. It always sticks in my mind because most of the teachers who took football teams thought they were Jock Stein, but he didn’t talk tactics or anything like that, he just used to say: “Right, enjoy yourselves boys, off you go.”

As a student teacher, I actually ended up back in his classroom.

I can also remember the teachers who belted me - or I can remember the ones where I felt burning injustice at being belted.

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

We used to have Friday afternoons given over to activities and there was a photography club with a dark room, so you could develop your own pictures. I enjoyed that and I did Duke of Edinburgh [the long-running award scheme that encourages young people to learn a wide range of new skills] when I was in school and I played for school sports teams.

We also had the St Mirin’s Academy Music Appreciation Society, and we used to travel up to listen to string quartets and the like, so I enjoyed all of the social life round the school.

I don’t think I would say I had any particularly bad times: I more or less enjoyed school, to be honest. Nobody got too fussed about the belting - it was just considered normal.

3. Why do you work in education?

I enjoy working with young people. It’s constantly fresh and, to be honest, you get a good laugh - the pupils are always entertaining, one way or another.

It’s enormously satisfying to see students making progress and is a very sociable occupation.

I used to say to student teachers when they were in the department: “Why do you want to be an English teacher?” If they said, “I really like English and I want to talk about books”, I’d ask them if they liked kids - and I would tell them that if they didn’t, and they wanted to talk about books, they should become a university lecturer.

I do think education is an occupation where you can make a difference and I’ve always found it very rewarding. My daughter is now a maths teacher in Edinburgh and my son’s a primary teacher in Glasgow.

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

It’s hard to narrow that down to specifics. Generally, I’ve managed to have good positive relationships with young people and I always enjoy when you meet former pupils - when they are adults years later - and they approach you and talk to you. I think that’s a good measure.

Obviously, I’ve not managed to maintain positive relationships with every young person I’ve taught. I remember sitting in a barber’s chair and the person who was going to cut my hair saying: “Just what I always wanted, a former teacher in my chair and me with a razor in my hand.” But, by and large, I’ve found the young people I’ve taught to be decent people and you can make a difference. That sounds a bit mushy but it’s not something everybody can say.

Also, in terms of things I’m proud of, when I was PT [principal teacher] at Hillhead [High, in Glasgow], I introduced mixed ability across Standard Grade and stopped setting people into Credit, General and Foundation classes.

A couple of people were sceptical about the idea but the first year we did it, we had no Foundation awards [the lowest level of Standard Grade] for the first time ever. Our grade 1s and grade 2s did not diminish but, instead of having a Foundation class of 15 boys who were there because of mainly behavioural challenges, all those guys were across the classrooms and benefited from the mixed approach, and having people in their groups who could help them.

[In terms of regrets], young teachers nowadays do a lot more academic research. If I was starting my career now, I would be looking at achieving higher levels of qualifications than I’ve got. It’s not particularly held me back but the professional development agenda today is much more positive.

I did a master’s certificate through the Open University and, at the time, I intended to go on and complete my master’s [degree], but family circumstances meant there were other things to spend that money on. Maybe I’ll do it when I retire.

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

I think any group has to have a diverse skill set, so you would not want to be working with clones of yourself. There has to be challenge, so that people can say “I don’t think that’s a good idea”. A couple of people were sceptical about the idea of mixed ability Standard Grade and kept raising issues about some of the challenges, in terms of appropriate texts and behaviour challenges. That was good because we had to keep talking things through.

When I arrived at Hillhead, Anne Donovan, who is now a novelist [Buddha Da is her most famous book], was the APT [assistant principal teacher]. Had she wanted to be PT, the job [would have been] hers, but she wanted to develop her writing and didn’t apply for the job, which left it open for me to get it.

Anne was brilliant and a complete contrast to me in terms of teaching style. She was a fabulous teacher. She would rarely raise her voice. She was a much gentler person. She did a lot of individual work with the pupils and would nurture pupils very directly.

Some of the ways I taught were effective but people with different styles were also effective. Having a mix of personalities and styles keeps everybody working and learning.

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

The best bit is that our entire education system is now absolutely focused on equity and tackling disadvantage.

Because it’s now so commonplace, and all the political parties talk about closing the attainment gap, it’s kind of assumed that’s the way it always was. But I started teaching in 1979 at Blantyre High and we had two “remedial” teachers - and the kids that were in these classes basically stayed there from first year to fourth year.

My first fourth-year class, in 1979, was called “S4 vocational”, which was a class of nearly all boys, and none of them was presented for O-grade qualifications. But they had to stay on until the school leaving age of 16.

In 1980, when these kids left, the best they went on to was the Youth Opportunities Programme - none of them left to get a permanent job.

In the 1980s, young people leaving school without qualifications was just par for the course - it was Thatcher’s Britain and it was desperate. So the fact that, nowadays, the system is geared up to make sure young people have positive destinations and schools are responsible for people up to the age of 18, even if they leave at 16 - for me, that’s a phenomenal change in the focus of education.

Even back in the 1990s, we were still obsessing about league tables based on Higher qualifications. The impact of poverty, which existed then as much as it does now, was, as I said, just shrugged off as “that’s life”.

So, this huge focus we’ve got now, where not one political party would advocate anything other than equity and social justice in our school system - it’s progress. We could then talk about what still needs to be done - and the EIS talks about that - but I don’t think people should underestimate the change that has happened over the past four decades.

I suppose the worse aspect is that we do still have to overcome the barriers, but we are going to have a poverty-related attainment gap as long as we have poverty in the general community.

Schools can and do make a difference, even if they can’t resolve things, but we do need smaller class sizes and more targeted support. We don’t organise our schools on the basis of inequity - which is what we used to do - but we don’t organise them sufficiently to overcome inequity.

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

I’ve been influenced by individual colleagues like Anne but, in terms of educationalists, I was impressed by the work of Brian Boyd, who was originally an English teacher but who went on to become an academic, based at the University of Strathclyde. He was talking about approaches to tackling poverty before it became popular.

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

Employ more teachers, reduce class sizes and ensure there is adequate support for children with additional needs. In the afternoon, I would sort out the qualifications system.

I was involved in all the CfE [Curriculum for Excellence] discussions, so I know exactly where the qualifications system has gone wrong. We were talking about exit qualifications - which is the Finnish system - and that is what we should still be doing. We have three years of secondary, working your way through a qualifications ladder, and it detracts from deeper learning.

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

There will be changes in terms of access to new technology and IT but education will still revolve around the teacher-pupil relationship. The pandemic has shown how important schools are when it comes to wellbeing and sense of self, and I don’t see that changing.

10. What one person do you think has made the most difference to our schools in the past 12 months?

The classroom teacher.

Larry Flanagan was speaking to Tes Scotland reporter Emma Seith

This article originally appeared in the 21 May 2021 issue