More male teachers - doesn't that mean fewer females?

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/apr/03/bridget-phillipson-education-secretary-more-male-teachers-adolescence

I don't think this was a considered statement as in world where women have had to fight hard for representation in professions it is is grange for a cabinet Secretary to advocate for more men in a professiion. We certainly wouldn't see the health Secretary advocate for male doctors in a profession historically dominated by men at least until the last few decades.

I don't think teachers are there primarily to be role models but educators. The sex of the teacher should make no difference only their overall ability to the job. To somehow suggest a male has more authority or respect from male pupils surely is just veiled sexism?

I don't personally agree......

I wonder if this is my school 🤣 We hired a male teacher 4 years ago, who had no authority at all…he just wanted to be buddies with the children, behaviour went to shit and he eventually left after being on a support plan (which he didn’t work with)! Nice enough bloke…ineffective teacher!

I agree, and that’s as a teacher myself. Like someone said above, too many kids (both sexes) don’t have positive male role models in their lives, and it is a fact whether you like it or not, that boys need positive male role models.

We need more teachers, full stop. It doesn’t mean fewer females if those new teachers are male. Just gaps being filled.

Not my OH's experience in the slightest!

To be fair, I’ve also worked with a few male teachers who were lazy and rubbish and just got the job due to their maleness (and being able to talk the talk in an interview, I guess). But, in my son’s secondary school there are some awesome male teachers and he needs them.

On a side note, I do not think teaching would be in the state it's in (in terms of workload etc) if there were more male teachers. Women are so used to doing huge amounts of 'unseen' work and this has become normal in teaching and is the reason many have left. I honestly believe that if 50% of the workforce was men, teachers would not have to fight for PPA, for good working conditions, for their directed time overviews. Many of the male teachers I know have 'failed' because they were seen to be leaving early too often (going to a sports club for example), or they didn't get all of their books marked every night (my school had a policy which was 90 books and evening and would take me until 10pm). They would say, I did have time. And it's true. If the whole teaching profession did that, perhaps the system would change and we'd be in a better place. But women just do it. I realise I've made huge assumptions and generalisations there but I honestly think it would be different.

Hang on, why is positive discrimination okay when we are trying to boost numbers of ethnic minorities in key positions, boost women in c-suite roles, make disabled people more visible, but now when we find an area where more men are needed suddenly it's "Nope, not gonna provide any help to that group"

Exactly. I was born in the mid 1950s and for much of my life have watched as there's been pressure to encourage and support women into areas of work that were previously dominated by men. Then action was taken to boost the number of disabled applicants or people of other ethnicities and removing barriers for them. And all those moves have been nothing but positive.

Now we have an area of employment which has become unattractive to men, and we are seeing a downside to that. It is absolutely ridiculous to complain that women are somehow being sidelined by any efforts to encourage men to be teachers. And it's not as if teaching roles are even hard to come by.

31k is not a good starting salary for someone with a postgraduate qualification when minimum wage is 24k so that’s the first thing.

Teaching is hard and thankless, men generally have better employment opportunities than women - so if you want them in there you need to make the job more enticing to them. So either the job is made easier or less stressful or the pay matches the skills and qualifications required.

I don’t think more male teachers is a good/bad thing - they would probably make most difference in primary schools in deprived areas if they’re there to model being a man and it’s how you would target that without being discriminatory to the women already doing that on their current pay and conditions.

It would be nice to have some teachers in the shortage areas, male or female.

When looking at making a workforce more diverse you have to think what are the barriers to men being teachers. The big barrier has to be being assumed to be a pedophile in primary schools.

I'm not sure what barriers there are to secondary teaching. I don't think it is just pay as its not a huge outlier for low pay. Its pretty average pay. I think it's status. Teachers have low status in society and are openly called 'the blob' etc.

Yes, absolutely, it is about status.

Not only more male teachers needed but more variety as to type of male teacher. We need to be wary of too many obsessed with team games with a macho attitude. I remember the best male teachers weren’t also sports teachers and they seemed more interested in subject teaching rather than obsessing about the school sports teams.

You’re just coming across as sexist in this thread, which is no surprise - most people will tend to discriminate in favour of people “like” them in some respect, even if just subconsciously but maybe you should have a bit of a think about your attitude.

Agree that men would not put up with the unnecessary extra work women take on and conditions would improve overall with a greater male presence (of quality teachers) As a former teacher who had worked in other progressions, it really exasperated me that women who have only ever worked in education try to out/martyr each other.

I 100% agree with this. My OH is really good at pushing back against SLT demands to do stuff outside directed time and asking for (and getting) occasional lieu days after things like residentials.

@SomethingFun

31k is not a good starting salary for someone with a postgraduate qualification when minimum wage is 24k so that’s the first thing.

Lots of professions have similar or lower starting salaries. In my profession, accountancy, graduates are mostly on less than that. Likewise my son was a graduate actuarial scheme trainee with one of the uks largest insurers for less than £30k, especially in the regions outside the major cities. £31k is a cracking starting salary out in the regions away from London, Manchester, Bristol, etc.

So you dont want people to view teaching as a women's job but your unhappy at the government encouraging for more male teachers?

Yes of course but there are many people who say the lack of men is because of the salary vs the work.

There are pushes to increase the salary, to attract more men into the job.

An increase in salary for the men will also be an increase in salary for the women.

And so encouraging more men into teaching isn’t going to negatively affect the female staff.

If £31k is a cracking starting salary, why don't we have people, men in particular, queuing up to take it?

It's also worth remembering that we don't have such an oversupply of strong applicants into teaching that we'd be losing any of our best female candidates in a male recruitment drive.

I think it's a bit crap to suggest that teaching has terrible conditions because women are martyrs and the men would come sort it all out.

The government has made it clear there is no more funding for education. The men will have to sort it out with the same funds and get the same results as the women.

We are a low wage economy, depressingly it is an okay starting wage as is the wage as you progress and comparable with other professions. F1s for example start on only £1k above and have an extra year of education minimum. It's part of the bigger issue of min wage rising and the jobs above it not, but that's not going to happen so sadly the gap decreases and high stress jobs requiring a high level of education are not as appealing; as we see with the shortages.

I'd just be happy if there were more men in general that could be considered good role models for children, let alone whether they are teachers or not.

How is she going to ensure these extra male teachers are actually good quality? Misogyny is a male problem and putting those same men into schools will just equal more of the same

I think more male teachers would be a positive thing particularly at primary school
Would shake schools up a bit and make them more like the real world

How is she going to ensure these extra male teachers are actually good quality? Misogyny is a male problem and putting those same men into schools will just equal more of the same

That's the job of the training provider/university.

While it's not fool proof, we have an extensive application and interview process and a robust fitness to practice policy on our teacher training courses.

My ten year old has a male teacher. He’s awesome. Especially for the boys.

Also my sister started out as a newly qualified solicitor (in a small firm) on £24k. She doesn’t earn that now, but my other sister who is a deputy head teacher earns about the same as her (Scotland).

I don’t see any mention of positive discrimination in the article. Regardless, if you reversed your words to apply to any male-dominated profession, it would read as regressive. Would you say the same about balancing other demographics (race, age, disability) in the profession?

It matters to children that they see people like them in significant roles. Teachers are the next most influential figures in their life after family, for a time anyway. Our school has a few male teachers - not enough, but one is in early years which is very unusual - and a male SENCO. I have no doubt this is better for the kids than having an all female staff - over time, not just in the day to day. I would be as worried by an all female primary staff as I would by an all white staff.