To ask is this quite normal for primary schools?

In my own experience you tend to get more male teachers as the children get older. My fav teacher at primary was a man in years 5 & 6 and my own children had a male teacher in upper primary. They had a lot more male teachers at secondary school.

The nursery I work at has a male teacher but most younger age groups are cared for by a majority of female staff.

Personally, I think it is a shame there isn’t more male teachers in younger age groups, especially as there tends to be a portion of single mum households whose children could benefit from positive male influences if they don’t have this through uncles/grandads - plus men play differently with children and this can be a good thing for children to experience.

We're 2 form entry with a long-serving staff. 14 female teachers, 3 male teachers, one male headteacher. 2 male TAs out of 10 TAs.

It's pretty true that a lot of males who go into teaching go with leadership in mind from the start and then make the moves needed to get there. I've had 6 headteachers and only 2 have been male though.

It's normal, in secondary it's more balanced

At DC’s last indie, the only male was the PE teacher

Yes ours had 3 and was seen as unusual.

My DCs school (youngest finished in 2015) had three male teachers in the juniors and that was it. Three form entry.

But there's no way people would let a male teacher supervise the girls.

As a female teacher I have supervised boys getting changed for swimming. It doesn’t have to be a man. In some schools this would be impossible because as mentioned above, some schools have no men!

Men are rare in infants, more common in juniors but still outnumbered by women. In my experience once you get a few men in school you tend to attract more. Perhaps men aren’t keen on being the only man or one of two, and once there are a few more men are likely to apply? I don’t know.

I think something like 50% of primary heads are men however, which is interesting given it’s probably more like 10% of primary teachers.

Apologies, I misinterpreted your comment.

No! I think he has to go to everything so that the little boys have a supervisor to take them to toilets/changing rooms. Seems to be his sole responsibility for the whole school. That's all I meant.

You're implying he's a paedophile?

At my son's school all the teachers and TA's are women aside from the head and deputy head who are men.
The deputy head went to the swimming pool every week when my son's year had swimming lessons for a term, to supervise in the changing rooms and seems to go on each and every school trip my son has ever been on too.

My DC's school (tiny rural village school) had 100% female staff when my youngest started - literally everyone including non teaching staff. By the time my youngest left two thirds of the qualified teaching staff were male. Whilst all the female teachers were excellent I do think that my boys benefitted from having male teachers in primary. There's a real shortage though and unfortunately I doubt it will change significantly in the near future. One of my DS's friends has just started a primary teaching degree and is one of very few male students in his cohort.

Oh yes ! The dick factor.
If you have one you’ll be running the school within ten years.
Studies show that children want a good teacher and their sex is irrelevant.

Google it, about 14% of primary school teachers are male. It’s always been this way. When I was at school we had two male teachers in the whole school- one taught year 2 and one was the deputy head, that was it. My older DC had two men as well- the headteacher and a year 5 teacher and my younger DC’s primary now has one, think he’s the year 5 teacher as well.

When I was in teacher training for primary education there was only one man out of about 30 of us on the course.

We are in London so have seen a lot of male staff. dd actually had a male teacher in her preschool year which I thought was great. DS has also benefitted from having a male for one of his infant years.

Normal, and as PP have pointed out, disproportionately in leadership roles.

Some of the best primary teachers I’ve known have been male, but also so have the absolute worst. I trained alongside 2 men who were treated absolutely abysmally by the schools they worked in. The attitude towards them from female colleagues was awful. One left after a year.

My son is in an SEN school and there are a lot of male staff there.

When my son was in mainstream they had 1 male teacher in the whole school and no male TAs. Now he’s in SEN they have a lot more male staff, not quite sure if they’re teachers or TAs.

Very common, our local one had no male staff for over 10 years.

Same as nursing, social work care work and any other caring job.

Very normal. My DDs primary has one male teacher (teaching year 5) and a male head.

Older DDs secondary school is about 50/50 though

Very normal. In my fairly large (400 pupils) primary, 40 odd years ago, the only male staff were the headmaster and the janitor. And the headmaster retired and his replacement was a woman. Of course, there are plenty on here who think the fewer male staff in primary schools etc, the better.

I went to school in the '70s. We had a male Head and three male teachers. Two very old school , suit, shirt and tie, and one young man with long hair, a beard and very flared jeans. 🤣