Back in 2004, serial entrepreneur Iain MacRitchie took on a job that led him to become “possessed” and “traumatised” by the plight of care-experienced young people. Now, having founded the charity MCR Pathways, he works with Scottish schools to provide mentors for their most disadvantaged pupils, spurred on by the knowledge that this leads to a better education - which, in turn, “drives a better job choice, which drives life chances”. In March, MCR Pathways received government funding to enable it to set itself up in 300 of Scotland’s 357 secondary schools.

MacRitchie tells Tes Scotland about his own school days, the importance of school staff having more time to provide individualised support and why we need a soft-skills curriculum.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

I’ve got three. Mrs Thompson, who was my P6 and, I think, P7 teacher. She was absolutely fearsome and I needed that. She was a robust and in-your-face disciplinarian but she had a really caring edge to her as well.

I had moved from Thornwood Primary to Broomhill Primary in Glasgow, which was from a tougher school to a softer school. I was king of the hill - I think I chased the head boy around the playground on my first day - so I needed correcting and she certainly did that.

That tough love really suited me. It was quite traumatic going to a new school at the age of 9 or 10. Mrs Thompson got me on the straight and narrow and, eventually, I became the dux at the primary school.

My next one was a chemistry teacher but not for such a positive reason. I quite liked chemistry and physics because I was thinking of going to do medicine, and I thought I had a really good relationship with him. But he took me to the side one day when I was in S3 or S4 - and I know he was trying to do it for good reasons, but he really rattled me.

I’m sure it was in the context of “if you don’t pull your finger out” because, at that point in time, I was really losing the plot. But he just said I was never going to amount to anything, and that really riled me and upset me. And, although, in a sense, it gave me some motivation, something like that could deflate you to the point where you don’t try.

Sometimes words can stick but the intent gets lost. Those words really damaged me because I did feel a sense of inferiority in the subject, even though I could logically say “that’s a load of rubbish”.

My third teacher was Mr McIver, who was a bit of a “teuchter” as well - my family were originally from the Western Isles - so there was a connection. He was a brilliant contradiction because he was a really traditional maths teacher but he took the school football teams, and he was fabulous and engaging and encouraging.

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

The best thing was the sense of achievement I got from sport - being in the Glasgow schools football team which, back in the day, was the top of the pile, and then progressing on to Clyde FC when I was 16 or 17. I also used to be quite fast at running, so it was that buzz from representing the school and winning stuff.

The worst was when I was playing in a rubbish team and we just couldn’t get anywhere - sometimes we would get annihilated. I remember we once got beaten 10-3.

I also started to get caught out when I was in third year. It’s the time of maximum hormones and I certainly experienced that; I peaked too soon. I managed to stagger through my O grades but I was doing no work and I was running out of steam. I got the belt quite a lot and began to fall into the “bad boy” category. Sport was my saviour - it kept me safe and sane - but, other than that, I wasn’t really interested.

3. Why do you work in education?

The first thing that stimulated my interest in training and education was a breakthrough idea at a tiny East Kilbride company where I worked straight out of uni. What we came up with was a chemical coating that could be printed on so you could identify and label each component in a computer or mobile phone. But we had what was perceived to be an average ragbag of a team and we had to bring our staff on quickly, so we learned the transformational power of training. That company was sold three or four years ago for $250 million [around £182 million].

I got the buzz for education when I got asked to go into three organisations that ran 90 residential care homes, five schools and a foster agency. They were losing [a combined] half a million a month, really in difficulty financially, and the quality was not great. We sorted all that out over five years and got accolades, “outstanding” ratings from Ofsted - all that stuff.

But it made zero difference to the young people. Their outcomes were as bad if not worse than when we started, and that’s classic evidence that the system - in spite of the brilliant people in it - did not work. The single thing that does shift the dial is a better education outcome at school - that drives a better job choice, which drives life chances.

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

I’ve had awards and accolades, and they are moments in time and you enjoy them - but the best by a country mile is the power of mentoring young people. One girl I mentored has gone from being estranged from her family and living in a homeless unit while she was in school, and she’s now in medical school. That sort of journey is phenomenal.

What she remembers is that I never gave up and she knew I was there. It was a relationship that she trusted and could rely upon. And, for me, that’s what MCR mentoring is.

What I’ve learned over time is the last five per cent of a project, or a moment, is what really matters. It can be the difference between good and great, or success and failure. So my regrets - and I don’t hold them for long because I want to use them so I can do things differently the next time - are just individuals and projects that maybe I should have spent more time on.

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

The best colleagues definitely have to have shared values - everybody would say they have got certain values but, actually, we all have a league table of our own, so I’m interested in “what’s your league table [of priorities]?”. A high-flying entrepreneur might share your values but have their own interests at the top of the league table; for a politician, the need to get votes might be at the top of the league table.

The kind of people we want to bring together are those who put others above themselves - or at least the young people.

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

Schools are much more than just education. They are safe havens, they are where positive relationships are established, where young people get a sense of community - even if they are not pitching up all the time. For disadvantaged pupils, it can be the only place where aspirations are built and encouraged. So I’m really pleased that schools are getting better at reflecting that with the variety of support on offer.

The challenge is that there is not time to support the individuals. Being able to support the individual is our greatest challenge and that’s why things like mentoring really begin to resonate and have an impact.

That’s the contradiction - there’s more variety and there’s more support but we are not matching that with the time for that to work. We need to think about how we give the teachers and support staff the time to form the individual relationships, because they determine the education outcome, the job choice and the life chance.

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

Some of the educationalists and the teachers in that care-home setting were phenomenal. They really taught me, “forget about the content, deal with the mindset and behaviour first”. They were off-the-scale patient and incredibly committed. But the kids in that care home were 16-18, and that really was too late, which is why we start engaging in S1 and S2 and then in S3 - remember that year from hell when all the hormones kick in? - we give them their mentor match.

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

I would reframe education content into two distinct areas. There are human skills that we need to teach and there are technical skills that will lead to employment and industry. As an employer, I need people who can communicate, relate and build relationships because, in any sector, the human skills are critically important and they lead to the ability to do projects - but we don’t teach them enough.

The second is technical skills and future employment - we really need to look at what’s required in industry and it may mean a bit of a curriculum upgrade.

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

I think pupils will be taught in small groups, with some of the learning peer directed - S5 and S6 pupils working with younger pupils - and it will be industry led, with pupils given real-world projects to work on.

I think we should have a whole set of different attainment measures - let’s call them badges of experience, a bit like the Scouts - and there are hundreds of badges you can accumulate over the six years instead of it all coming down to an exam in May or June.

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

Maureen McKenna [Glasgow City Council’s education director] needs serious accolades. She is a class act in every regard. Top of her values, irrespective of the pressure she comes under, are young people and their education.

It’s a tough job to be director of education because you have multiple masters - parents, politicians, the education secretary, the council chief executive and employers. She takes in what they all say, treats everyone the same, and then takes decisions that are in the best interests of the young people - and the results that Glasgow has achieved are exceptional.

Iain MacRitchie was speaking to Tes Scotland reporter Emma Seith

This article originally appeared in the 23 April 2021 issue