How good is Scottish education? It’s the perennial question and, often, the conclusion reached by academics or the media is not favourable - or at least focuses on the aspects that need work, as opposed to the success stories.

But recently, one man’s success story hit the headlines and he was clear about the massive role that his Scottish state school education had played in it.

Scottish scientist David WC MacMillan was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last week and said he was “incredibly lucky” to have been a pupil in Scotland. MacMillan (pictured) grew up in Lanarkshire, where he attended New Stevenston Primary School and Bellshill Academy, and he praised the “brilliant” education he received.

It was a news story that was seized upon by the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who congratulated MacMillan on social media, praising his “extraordinary achievement”.

Disagreement followed on Twitter about whether his comments were “a massive thumbs up for a Scottish education” - as one contributor put it - or if his experience would be entirely different today because MacMillan, who now lives in the US, was educated in the 1970s and 1980s, “when schools in Scotland were decent”.

But despite the polarised debate that his comments sparked, it was refreshing to hear Scottish education being praised so highly.

Telling positive stories like this is, according to Maureen McKenna, the outgoing education director in Glasgow, something that Scotland needs to get better at.

McKenna - the subject of the “10 questions with …” feature in next week’s issue of Tes Scotland (22 October) - has presided over significant change in the 14 years she has been in post, including a 94 per cent reduction in exclusion, and is credited with changing “the landscape of education in the city”.

But she remembers the “constant flak” that education in Glasgow used to receive and the impact of that frequent criticism. It ground school staff down, so changing that narrative, McKenna says, was key to making improvements in the city’s schools because “an optimistic system is an improving system”.

Glasgow is still ranked 32nd out of 32 councils on many education measures, says McKenna, but she argues that no other local authority comes close in terms of the challenges it faces. Crucially, the council’s position at the bottom of the table is not seen as “failing”.

When talking about education, McKenna paints a rounded picture - she talks about improvements in attainment but she also talks about the decreases in youth offending, arguing that the nurturing approach taken in Glasgow schools has contributed to this.

Of course, Glasgow schools do not have the monopoly on care and compassion. In Scotland more widely, the message that all behaviour is communication has been widely accepted, owing to people such as the research scientist and prominent campaigner on adverse childhood experiences, Suzanne Zeedyk, who has been incredibly effective when it comes to spreading her message that schools need to “get curious” when children misbehave, rather than punishing them.

The effort and time that takes, though, should not be underestimated. But when we ask how good Scottish education is, the measurements we use to make our judgements rarely take into account all of that investment in shaping children so that they can make better decisions.

MacMillan’s P4 teacher said it was “evident, even at that young age, that David was a very clever lad”. But what happened to those more disruptive and challenging pupils in the 1970s and 1980s?

Some - such as those responding to Sturgeon’s congratulatory tweet - remember that era as a time when “Scotland had a reputation for the best education”, but the general secretary of the EIS teaching union, Larry Flanagan, disagrees.

In an interview with Tes Scotland earlier this year (21 May), he said he had no patience for those who talk down the current system and hark back to the “halcyon days” of Scottish education.

Flanagan started teaching in 1979 and said that, in the 1980s, pupils leaving school with no qualifications was “par for the course” while in the 1990s, the impact of poverty was “just shrugged off as ‘that’s life’”.

However, if Scotland is making progress on the wider aims of Curriculum for Excellence and creating, in particular, more “responsible citizens”, “confident individuals” and “effective contributors” - as well as “successful learners” - it needs to get to grips with how it measures and evidences that, as highlighted by Audit Scotland in its recent report on improving education outcomes.

Recently, the auditor general said that if, as is accepted, schools are about more than exam results, “robust data” on the broader aims of Scottish education is needed in areas such as children’s health, wellbeing and confidence.

Then, perhaps, we can start to answer that question about how good the system actually is - and, hopefully, feel prouder of the picture that is painted.

And if - as McKenna’s experience suggests - success breeds success, who knows what the impact of that could be?

Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith

This article originally appeared in the 15 October 2021 issue under the headline “Scottish schools were good enough for Nobel laureate MacMillan, but is that still the case?”