To ask is this quite normal for primary schools?

[Tannie10]

I’m looking at schools for my DS. I had a look round the school that is closest to us. I liked it but realised they have very little male staff. I think only 1 male teacher in y4 and it’s a 2 form school. I think they had 3 male TAs. But absolutely no male staff at all in the infants part of the school. Is this quite normal?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

You're implying he's a paedophile?

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.

Apologies, I misinterpreted your comment.

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.

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!

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

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

Yes ours had 3 and was seen as unusual.

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

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

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.

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.

Primary - yes it often has a very female dominated teaching and support staff.

Secondary schools have a much higher number of male staff although still less than females.

My school has 1 male in EYFS, 1 male in year 2, 1 male in year 6 and a male deputy. We are 3 form entry.

they have very little male staff

Don't be sizeist 😂

I would say there are a handful of men in KS2, very few in KS1 and I've never seen one (teacher) in EYFS! We had one mad nursery nurse who was amazing, but the parents were vile to (and about) him, so he left the job altogether.

It’s normal. Usually the males will be the Head and Deputy Head, everyone else apart from the Caretaker is a woman.

Very normal but made me think about something- it’s often the case that the head is male (more often than female IME) but the vast majority of the teachers are female. Obviously the head started out as a teacher, so I wonder if that means male teachers are being promoted at a much higher rate than female teachers or if male teachers just have more desire to be headteachers 🤔

Primary - male headteacher, 1 male caretaker and 1 male teacher. (300 pupils)

Secondary - lots of male teachers, probably an equal split. (1400 pupils)

I work in a primary school, there are 2 male pe teachers and 1 male teacher (150 pupils)

Yep. All men are bastard nonces according to MN.