Primary Schools=Men Free Zones - Sad?

[Willbreakmybones]

Hi

I'm a newbie here but I've become increasingly concerned by the near total lack of male teachers/staff in the all the 5 primary schools I have looked around for our kids. I have two boys who, like most boys, are into sports, adventure stuff and getting dirty.

What message are my boys going to get if there is not one single male teacher in their school? (Even the governing bodies are overwhelmingly female!) Gender steotyping and aspirations aside, how will the quality of their education differ from those who attend schools which have more of a 50/50 male female mix?

Sure, sports clubs for boys do seem to take place but they are run by outside organistations who obviously do not know the children as well as the staff.

I used to be secondary school teacher, and the schools I worked in had a rougly 50/50 split which was ideal for a large mixed school. But primary schools?

Anyone else out there as concerned as me that our schools do no adequately reflect society?

Our local primary school has a male reception teacher and it is wonderful for the DCs, he has a much different an approach to a woman. I don't think that there will be much change until being a primary school teacher is seen as a higher status job and we get rid of the suspicion that every male who wants close contact with DCs is a potential paedophile.

I agree with Stillenacht that a mix would be good: in fact, ds's school does have a mix (though I can't help noticing that 4 headteachers in a row have been male and the secretarial staff are all female ).

But there does seem to be an unspoken assumption in some of your posts that "weak" teachers are usually female. I had an almost 50/50 mix in my own school career, and looking back most of the feeble teachers were male.

So how would you rate a weak male teacher for the development of a boy's learning instincts?

Or do you think that any male teacher would automatically be stronger?

We have 2 male teachers at our primary and a male head. I was very pleased when we took DS to look round, and surprised!

piscesmoon speaks sense as usual

dandruff I am on the GB of our infant school - but there's not much we can do if we don't get any applications from men is there

If you want more male primary teachers, you'll have to pay primary teachers more. Can't see many people volunteering to pay extra taxes - and actually all those extra taxes we will have to pay thanks to the banks screwing up will not go into education.

Men with qualifications are far less likely to go into poorly paid jobs than women.

ds's primary school has has one male teacher, who happens to be fab - he's treated as a bit of a minor celeb, everyone knows him and raves about him. Because he stands out.

Board of governors is 50:50 I think but the chair is a man and the men are definitely more pushy/bossy.

The 28yr old,single male, reception teacher gets some teasing from his mates down the pub. It isn't seen as a 'man's job', despite the fact that he is excellent at it-there lies the problem.

Cory, I can't believe anyone would automatically think a man would be a stronger teacher. I've got the unusual case of a primary school where 50% of the staff are male, but the first thing we all think of when the classes/ teachers are announced for the next academic year isn't 'is it a man?'. All we want to know is 'who is it and are they a good teacher'. Gender doesn't come into it in that way. All we want is good teachers - we'd all agree on that. But I still think a mix of good teachers from both sexes is ideal.

I quite agree, smee. It was just that a couple of the OPs posts mentioned how her son had been affected by weak female teachers. I wondered what she would think of weak male teachers. And she also mentioned the unfortunate predominance of female teachers in the context of her boys being keen on sport and adventure- as if those were somehow the domain of male teachers.

I absolutely agree that a mix is a good thing, anyway, because it gives a far more natural idea of society.

Weak teaching is weak teaching, and gender should not come into it.

I just worry that so many of our children are, quite possibly, growing up thinking that teaching is a career for girls as direct a result of the gender imbalance they witness every day at school.

I often think Harriet Harman was on to something when she suggested that if there had been more women working on the boards of investment banks then the whole financial crisis might have been averted.

Following the same logic, where is the politican to suggest that if there were more men working in schools then our education systemt might be performing much better than it is at the moment?

Food for thought.

A strong teacher, regardless of gender is of course paramount. I purely think that boys benefit from having a male presence in the classroom - teachers are an inspiration and an influence and many male teachers have a different way of accessing the curriculum to female teachers (of course not all but we all know men and women are different and in practice this does transpire within the confines of the classroom too).

'We all know men and woemn are different'.

Yes, biologhically certainly, although many would argue that these differences have very little impact in a classroom situation and that the most significant differences are individual ones rather than gender-related.

Any differences - cultural or genetic play a part in how the curriculum is delivered. I really do believe that male and female teachers have slightly different approaches based on their biology. Of course there are individual differences between women and also between male teachers but I think our gender certainly influences our teaching styles, manner and thought processes involved therein.

We will never agree on this one

No i was just about to say that too lol when I saw that your name had come up - I can only say what i truly believe to have happened to my son and to his friends and also from what I have observed in 14 years of teaching.

We will have to agree to disagree

WHen I worked in education we had a fabulous reception teacher - the best I have ever worked with who was male.
A group of nasty vicious parents joined forces to campaign about how having a male reception teacher was innapropriate.
Personally I would have told them to get stuffed and take their children elsewhere but they won and he can no longer work in the infants.
Parents claim they want more men in schools but at the same time they are suspecious of those that do