Shelley McLaren, head at Craigroyston Community High School in Edinburgh, struck a chord with an opinion piece she wrote for Tes in May. Thousands read the article and there was overwhelming support for her criticism of school league tables for presenting a highly misleading view of schools such as hers.

As Tes Scotland has documented several times in recent years, Craigroyston is innovative and is known for its unstinting support for all of its students. In 2019, it was shortlisted in the Tes Schools Awards for the work of its English teachers and their mantra of “high expectations and no excuses”.

McLaren - an English teacher herself - explains why she loves working in her school and the road she took to get there.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

Nadia Steele, my modern studies teacher at Leith Academy in Edinburgh - she’s still CL (curriculum leader) there now. She is probably the reason that I’m a teacher.

She was so knowledgeable about our subject but she also wanted you all to absolutely be the best you can be - it didn’t matter where you came from. If you weren’t putting in the effort, she wouldn’t be angry but she would be disappointed.

She went to the University of St Andrews and I think she did international relations - I saw that and thought: “That’s what I want to do.” After leaving school in 2003, I did go to St Andrews and did English and international relations - it was genuinely because of her.

She made it like an almost magical thing that “I can be this person, I can do that”. There wasn’t a huge culture of people going to university at Leith Academy but she said: “You can go to St Andrews - of course you can.” Before, it was somewhere that seemed unreachable.

How I am as a teacher at Craigroyston probably mirrors how she taught me - always saying to our young people: “You can do that.” And I still keep in touch with her.

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

The best thing was that I felt like it was a real family. The teachers really made you proud to be at our school. We lived in such a community in Leith and that filtered into the school.

The worst thing was home economics - I still don’t cook anything but luckily my husband likes being in the kitchen.

3. Why do you work in education?

I had such a positive experience at school myself. When I went to university, people would say: “Oh my god, you’re from Leith.” There wasn’t an expectation that people from my school would be successful. But I had learned that it doesn’t matter where you go to school as long as you’ve got people there who believe in you.

As a teacher, I really wanted to instil in young people my love of my subject but also so much more - it was about giving people a real chance; to help them recognise that, through education, you can have an amazing life. Leith Academy, to me, was the best school ever.

Going into school every day is amazing. I’m back at school today [after maternity leave] and seeing young people who have amazing ideas and an outlook on life that you maybe forget as an adult. When you’re surrounded by young people all day, there’s so much positivity and creativity.

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

In personal terms, without a doubt, I’m most proud of becoming a headteacher. As soon as I started, I absolutely fell in love with the role. I’ve been at Craigroyston for about a decade and always looked up to the headteacher who was there when I started, Margaret Russell - she was amazing.

It’s a privilege. You’re so involved in not just the school but also the community, and they take you in almost like you’re family. Every day, I genuinely say to myself: “Oh my god, I love going to my work.” I was also really proud of doing my Into Headship qualification last year, having done that at the same time as a full-time job.

But it’s also watching our young people - some of whom have overcome so many barriers - achieving their dreams. They’re an inspiration and it brings me so much joy watching them live the life they deserve.

My biggest regret is ever having tried a bacon and cheese bagel from the school canteen - they’re so amazing that it’s really difficult to walk past them at breaktime. This is not good.

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

All the staff we have now - they’re genuinely the best. It’s important to have a staffroom made up of all ages, walks of life and different skills and experiences. The main thing is that they love our young people and have a passion to change their lives for the better.

You want people who are motivated but who also like to laugh and bring joy to each day. And it’s really important to work with creative people who don’t mind taking a risk. Sometimes, when you’re budgeting for things and you’re thinking “is that gonna work?” you might be hesitant to do something new, but being with other people who say ‘“we can do that” makes you more confident.

One example where we’ve taken a risk was last year, when we built a [hair] salon in the school. It was a pipedream for years and cost quite a lot of money but now that we have it, it’s amazing, and young people are getting such a wonderful experience that they wouldn’t have had before. It’s a proper hairdresser’s. The kids even get all the staff down and do their hair for their Christmas night out.

If we need a few additions, I think [football manager] Gordon Strachan would be great. He would be able to give us great team talks and motivate us to use our skills. I think he’d be delighted, too - his mum stays across the road from our school so he could nip home for his dinner. Gayle Gorman [Education Scotland’s chief executive] would be fab - she’s inspirational, can share her great knowledge and seems to be really good fun.

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

I do feel like I’ve got quite a lot of autonomy to decide what happens in my school. I genuinely feel that if I want to do something within my context - for my school, my community - I can, but I know not everyone feels like that. People can find the curriculum quite restrictive but, at Craigroyston, we offer Advanced Highers in most subjects and also things like hairdressing and bike mechanics. I feel you do have that opportunity to be really creative in our school system.

And that we have PEF [pupil equity funding] and Scottish Attainment Challenge funding is actually incredible - the things we’re able to do with this money are phenomenal. Honestly, I feel so passionately about it - it’s one of the best things that the Scottish government has given that money to schools, and I do feel I have autonomy to use it for the things that are best for my community.

The worst aspect is the way that you’re measured - it’s so black and white. You’re not really ever given the opportunity to explain your context, so people don’t necessarily see the progress that you’ve made. We improved our attendance rate by 2 to 3 per cent a couple of years ago - this was massive, given the huge collective effort needed to get these kids to school who would normally not come in, perhaps because of a family situation. But you’re totally judged on other figures, not the overall story.

Our Facebook page is really active and it’s brilliant - we put up things most days, we can use it to communicate with parents and it’s really well used. But after the league tables came out, we got really nasty messages - not from anyone connected to the school but from people who don’t know anything about what we do. We’ve got more leavers going to university now but our community knows it’s OK if you don’t go to uni - maybe you’ve got an apprenticeship and that’s brilliant, too.

I’m so confident in what we do - I know the negative view of the school isn’t right, that our young people are brilliant, that they’re having good lives, that we’re educating them out of poverty. People just see the figures and think they can judge or say anything about us. And the media facilitates that - it creates the opportunity for people to just say what they want.

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

Steve Ross, who was Craigroyston head immediately before me, and Margaret Russell, the headteacher when I first started here.

They’re so different but I learned so much from them both, in so many ways. Margaret taught me how to be amazing with all the things that you need to do behind the scenes as a headteacher, like the paperwork, the organisation, the policies - she taught me to be really good at those things. If you’ve got all that in place, that’s half of your job done because your school will just run.

Steve taught me to be a risk-taker, to be creative - that you don’t just have to do the same as everybody else.

I must also mention two teachers who taught me the ropes. Elaine Clark, principal teacher of English at Arbroath High, and Chris Somerville, who’s now faculty head of English and languages at Lornshill Academy, in Clackmannanshire. They gave me incredible opportunities, encouraged me to keep to my values and never lose sight of them. They also shared their passion for our subject, and I learned from them how to enthuse young people.

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

I’d try to change the negative press that the teaching profession is given daily in the media. It’s harmful to staff, young people and communities who are working so incredibly hard to educate our young people. It can be so demoralising, especially during a global pandemic, when everything is more challenging. Abolishing league tables would also be top of my list or, indeed, the way schools are “measured” more generally - that doesn’t mean avoiding accountability but creating fairer, context-based measures.

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

That seems a long time but then you think back to 30 years ago and how much have things really changed, apart from in terms of technology?

We will be using technology in a way that we don’t even know yet. I do think there will also be a much better focus on what you really want to do after school and what you need to do to get there - not just on certain qualifications to get to a certain place. I love academia and it’s really important that young people have the opportunity to study at university, but that’s not the only path.

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

It’s 100 per cent the people on the ground doing the job who have made the real difference. But - and people may not all agree with me - I genuinely felt comforted to know that [former education secretary] John Swinney was in charge of education during the pandemic and would take into consideration what teachers were saying.

I know a lot of people felt he made some terrible decisions but I thought: “No, this guy’s got our back.” He was often in a difficult position where it didn’t actually matter what he did, people were going to be unhappy anyway.

Interview by Tes Scotland news editor Henry Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 4 June 2021 issue