Fifty years on, Miss Jean Brodie is still an inspiration to many young ladies

Although one of the school's former pupils, a plump, studious girl named Muriel Camberg had achieved some degree of literary success, it would be her latest novel, published that year, that would create perhaps the most famous teacher of all time and cement in the eyes of the world the notion that Edinburgh schoolgirls were truly the "crme de la crme".

It is 50 years this year since The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, Dame Muriel Spark's most famous novel, was published. During that time education in Scotland has changed enormously, yet the spirit of Miss Jean Brodie - unconventional, inspirational and flawed, the teacher who encouraged her girls to think for themselves while also attempting to control their futures - lives on.

Bryden, now 61, was certainly one of those inspired. After schooling at Spark's alma mater, she went on to become a teacher herself, and retired from the post of assistant head at another Edinburgh girl's school, The Mary Erskine School, two years ago. She remembers the spectre of Miss Jean Brodie looming large over her own schooldays at Gillespie's.

"When marked ink exercises were given back, these were dished out in order of merit," she says. "We all dreaded being the last to receive a mark: presumably the public announcement of marks was meant to motivate us.Spark said that although she based Brodie on Kay, they were far from the same people.

"I fell into Miss Kay's hands at the age of eleven. It might well be said that she fell into my hands… In a sense Miss Kay was nothing like Miss Brodie. In another sense she was far above and beyond her Brodie counterpart. If she could have met "Miss Brodie" Miss Kay would have put the fictional character firmly in her place."

By the time Bryden entered the school, Spark was becoming well known.

"The school was always very proud of Muriel Spark," she says. "I remember my English teacher in sixth year producing old school magazines that had poems by Muriel Camberg in them, and these were shown to us as something to aspire to."

But it was Brodie's unorthodox teaching methods at the Marcia Blaine School that made her such an enduring fictional character, not least for her passionate belief that pupils should receive an education in the original sense of the Latin verb educere, "to lead out", and her assurances that her girls, particularly her beloved Brodie set, should set their sights high and learn to think for themselves. Does that still exist in the private schools of Edinburgh today?

"That hasn't changed at all," says Bryden. "Obviously we were taught different subjects and perhaps in different teaching styles, but that aim that girls can achieve is still as strong now as it always was. At Gillespie's there was very much an idea that you were on your way to something else, and there was an expectation that you would work and you would make your mark in some way.

"When I taught at Mary Erskine it was the same, it existed to give you the key to the next door, whatever that was. The school equipped you to move on to the next stage in life, and you were encouraged to be ambitious. Your role models were women - female teachers, sports captains, heads of debating - they were all girls and you looked to them as role models, saw what they achieved, and they were good things that you aspired to."

But Miss Jean Brodie was a complex character. A fascist who worshipped Mussolini, she sent her girls confused moral messages, carrying on passionate affairs with the school singing teacher, Mr Lowther, and Mr Lloyd, the dashing, and very married art master.

David Gray, principal of the Erskine Stewart's Melville Schools, which encompasses The Mary Erskine School, Stewart's Melville College and The Mary Erskine and Stewart's Melville Junior School, warns that teachers need to be wary of Brodie as a role model.

"Jean Brodie was a flawed character," he says. "On the one hand she had the great qualities of a visionary and she had ambition and expectations of her girls. But on the other hand she was unbalanced, misguided, a fan of Benito Mussolini, and there's a great danger of extremism in the type of teacher she was. Single sex education has to be tempered by the understanding that those girls are going to go into a co-educational world in which people co-habit and work together."

Readers have, for the past half century, concurred on the shades of grey that pepper Brodie's character. Literary critic Hal Hager said of Jean Brodie that she "mirrors the complexity of human life. Jean Brodie is genuinely intent on opening up her girls' lives, on heightening their awareness of themselves and their world, and on breaking free of restrictive, conventional ways of thinking, feeling, and being".

Bryden says she believes Brodie's spirit - and this intention to open up lives - still lurks in Edinburgh classrooms, but also adds a note of caution.

"I think there are still teachers with a sense of style and charisma and, I would hope, a sense of humour, in the way that she had. But you must also remember that she didn't allow her pupils choices, and I think education now is much more pupil-centered at giving them choices. Miss Jean Brodie mapped out her pupils' futures for them instead of helping them look at the vast array of things out there. But the fact that she gee'd them up and got them interested in art and culture - good luck to her."

Miss Jean Brodie's influence - considerably amplified by Maggie Smith's Oscar-winning portrayal in the 1969 celluloid version - lives on outside the world of education too. The Edinburgh novelist Alexander McCall Smith based his character Domenica Macdonald in the 44 Scotland Street books on her, and even has another character liken her to the fictional teacher. Smith also cites the novel as one of his favourite humorous books, saying once: "(she] has a marvellous turn of phrase, especially when describing the gaseous domains of chemistry teachers. The humour is dry as a dog biscuit."

For Spark, it was that type of crme de la crme teaching attitude at Gillespie's that turned her into one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century.

"Muriel Spark rejected the idea that an unhappy start in life was necessary for the creative artist," points out Alasdair Roberts, author of Crme De La Crme, Girls' Schools Of Edinburgh. "She even wrote: 'I spent twelve years at Gillespie's, the most formative years of my life, and in many ways the most fortunate for a future writer.'"

Bryden, who started out at Spark's alma mater and ended up teaching in one of Edinburgh's foremost girls' schools, says that the basic ethos promoted by Spark's Brodie remains true today.

"There have been great revolutions in teaching styles, but I still think that what my school was trying to do for me, and what the school I taught at is trying to do for girls in the 21st century, are the same. It's that desire to produce girls who go into the world with a can-do attitude."

That Miss Brodie taught exclusively girls, is also significant, even in an Edinburgh where the number of single sex girls schools is shrinking, as evidenced by the sudden closure last June of St Margaret's, an independent girls' school.

"In girls' schools, the pupils can truly be themselves: the teachers focus on girls in the classroom, cooperative and enthusiastic learning is commonplace, academic achievement is high and so also is participation in sport," says Anne Everest, Head of St George's School for Girls in Edinburgh and Scottish Chair of The Girls' School Association. "We are still producing young women of independent mind and, with pride, we watch them go out into the world ready to make a difference and to embrace the opportunities that life has to offer."

Gray says that single sex education for girls, as taught at the Marcia Blaine School, helps encourage the crme de la crme attitude. "Intellectually girls thrive in an environment where they are with other girls and where they feel unthreatened by the influences of boys. Girls in a single sex environment are prepared to risk-take in a way they don't in a co-educational environment because they have to be leaders. It encourages them to break out of normal stereotyped images of women and encourages them to be ambitious and have high expectations."

Certainly, Miss Brodie encouraged her girls to do just that, in an age where such things were almost unheard of. And it seems that she is still out there, encouraging her crme de la crme, and still, one suspects, in her prime.

"She is held with a lot of affection in Edinburgh," says Bryden. "It's a certain type of maiden lady teacher with charisma and humour that rings a chord with people who have been educated in that 'talk and chalk' style throughout the whole of Scotland. She has a place in a lot of people's hearts - even though they still have reservations about her."

Quotes Of Miss Jean Brodie

'Little girls! I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crme de la crme.'

'Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.'

'Deep in most of us is the potential for greatness or the potential to inspire greatness.'

'Safety does not come first. Goodness, truth, and beauty come first.'

'For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.'

'I am a teacher! First, last, always!'

'Sandy, please try to do as I say and not as I do. Remember, you are a child, Sandy, and far from your prime.'

'I am truly in my prime.'

'I have dedicated, sacrificed my life to this profession.'