Transport tycoon and multimillionaire Sir Brian Souter is one of Scotland’s most successful businessmen.
But his school days were a different story, including encounters with the belt, being thrown out of class and narrowly escaping expulsion for failing his exams.
Exactly 50 years since he left Perth Academy, Sir Brian, 68, met some of his old school friends for a reunion.
And after exchanging memories of their antics and eccentric teachers, the Stagecoach founder and self-confessed ‘mischievous’ schoolboy told us some of his tales from the classroom.
Failing his exams
He revealed: “I was appallingly bad at science and maths so I failed all my exams in the third year.”
Faced with the choice of leaving to get a job and repeating a year, Sir Brian decided to have another crack.
“I changed my course to commercial and actually got the award for the year for economics and accounts in my fifth year.”
Pondering whether he might have been diagnosed with dyslexia if he was at school today, he said: “When you put x, y and z and all this in front of me by brain just glazes over but put a £ sign behind the numbers and I’m just fine with it!”
He went on to study commerce at what was then Dundee College of Technology, while also working as a student bus conductor with his father’s employer, and the rest is history.
IQ test struggles
Exams weren’t Sir Brian’s first failure at school, while he grew up in Perth’s Letham estate.
His first IQ test at Perth Junior Academy was “flunked very dramatically”.
But his result in a subsequent test to determine the school he would go on to was aided by a kindly teacher who spotted his struggles.
He said: “An elderly teacher at my primary school identified this and gave me a book of IQ tests and showed me how to do them, which you’re not really supposed to do, I don’t think!”
I wasn’t a shockingly bad child, I just pushed the parameters sometimes.”
Describing his mischievous side, Sir Brian recalled: “In those days you could get the belt for things, which probably wasn’t a bad thing in the sense you just got belted instead of being put out of the school.
“I wasn’t a shockingly bad child, I just pushed the parameters sometimes.
“One teacher said to my mother at a parents’ evening that when I was in the class she didn’t know if she was taking the class or I was taking the class.”
That history teacher – one he really liked – was among several that stood out in what he said was an overall positive educational experience.
Teacher’s approval
His high regard for his primary school teachers was exemplified when, in his 50s, he met his former P7 teacher during an event at the care home she was living in.
He said: “She was very nice to me and I remember saying to my wife afterwards, ‘my teacher is very pleased with me’!
“Children form these relationships with their teachers, and I’ve always been a bit of a pleaser, but the fact I was still pleasing my teacher made me feel good as a mature adult!”
Some of his secondary school teachers, he described as “eccentric”, and added: “I think I spent a bit of time in the corridor instead of the classroom!”
A butterfly with ‘no concentration whatsoever’
While one teacher told his parents ‘Brian is capable of doing more’ another described him as butterfly with ‘no concentration whatsoever’.
His teachers, he said, would be “shocked” to know the career that lay ahead – which saw him knighted in 2011.
But it was finding the right subjects, that was key to Sir Brian turning his performance around.
He said: “If I was interested in the subject I wasn’t a bad student but if I wasn’t interested I was a terrible student.
Follow your passions, choose things you’re interested in, because you will do better and you will enjoy it.”
“That’s something that’s really important for young people.”
And that would be his message to young people choosing their subjects in school now.
“Follow your passions, choose things you’re interested in, because you will do better and you will enjoy it.”
He is glad business studies has been ‘destigmatised’ as a subject choice now compared to when the likes of classical arts and Latin were aspired to.
“Wealth is generated through entrepreneurs and people taking risks and making these choices.
“To be educated on how to go about that would be helpful, otherwise you have to learn by your mistakes.”
Class of 1972 reunion
Several of Sir Brian’s former classmates revisited Perth Academy 50 years after they left in 1972.
They were piped into the school by S5 pupil Brodie Barrie, welcomed by head teacher Eleanor Paul and given a tour by senior pupils.
The friends were first reunited 25 years ago and have met a few times since.
One of the group, John Low, said: “It’s fascinating over a whole period just seeing where everything has changed and career-wise where we’ve all ended up and what we’ve done.”
Conversation