This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter.

If you’ve never lived in the parts of Scotland that are considered ‘remote’ – which of course just means ‘too far away from Glasgow and Edinburgh for some people to think they matter’ – then I think it is very difficult, and perhaps entirely impossible, to really understand what a school is, does, and means to people in communities far from the central belt.

It's a lesson I learned at the very beginning of my teaching career when I moved to Arran. I’d gone to school in a Glasgow suburb, and then completed my training placements in Ayrshire, but life at the other end of that ferry trip was very, very different.

Teaching at the island’s only high school meant that, within days, people living thirty miles away recognised me, and I was always aware that being part of the education system on Arran had helped ensure an extremely warm welcome for someone who was such an outsider that he had barely set foot on ‘the rock’ before moving there.

I still remember being amazed that so many pupils turned up on the last day before Christmas, and realising at that point just how central the high school is to the community connections across the island.

Of course they........

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