What should schools be doing to address this gender bias?

[Strix]

State schools 'making gender bias worse'

This article is about senior schools and A level choices. But I believe the gender bias also needs to be tackled in primary.

No I'm not! I'm quite clearly suggesting that maths and physics graduates don't want to be teachers and in many cases can't be teachers because they wouldn't be very good at it. I'm a maths graduate too. Many of the mathmos I met at Cambridge wouldn't have made good teachers at all. None of them wanted to try though, so...

Well there are plenty of people on English or history degrees who would make terrible teachers. But as the greater numbers mean that there are also many people who would make good teachers. The smaller numbers of physics graduates would limit the pool of people with degrees in physics who are suited to teachers. It isn't necessarily anything to do with the physics.

I can think of quite a few people on education degrees who would (and possibly will if they can scrape on by) make terrible teachers too.

Not sure that you can speculate that maths or physics grads would be less likely to want to be a teacher than any other subject. You are saying that there are more jobs open to them so they would less likely to teach, but that is suggesting that only those who can't do anything else end up teaching. Teaching should be more attractive to them than other graduates because of generous training bursaries and pretty much your pick of jobs.
But lack of graduates is an issue.

calamitously there are, And some of them find their way into the classroom. :( I think it's more difficult for a poor maths teacher to get into the classroom, because a lack of communication skills, for example, will be found out sooner. However I believe the main issue remains pay, and opportunities - there are better opportunities for good maths and physics graduates than teaching. It's not right, it's not how things should be, but it's how things are.

Noble, of you don't want to be a teacher, for whatever reason, whether it's preference or cowardice, and if you can earn way more doing something else - which top end maths and physics graduates can, then only the ones with a real vocation will enter teaching. Having your pick of jobs is no big attraction if its your pick of teaching jobs and you don't want to be a teacher. You clearly have a vocation and seem to find it difficult to accept that others do not - forcing people who don't want to do maths or physics at university to do so is unlikely to uncover more vocations. Increasing training bursarys so that they are genuinely generous (which they currently are not) might sway some people. But probably not a huge amount, I expect you're right there.

I think not being very good at communicating would probably be a problem for any teacher in any subject area. It's really a core skill that teachers need to have.

I think it's more difficult for a poor maths teacher to get into the classroom, because a lack of communication skills, for example, will be found out sooner.

??? Why would a lack of communication skills be found out sooner with a maths teacher than any other teacher?

Btw, it's easy for a poor maths teacher to get into the classroom. Maths PGCEs aren't very competitive to get onto. There are very few maths teachers competing for jobs and often you have to hire whoever turns up for interview simply so that you've got a body in the classroom.

Actually, I don't have a vocation, I fell into teaching. If there were more maths and physics graduates competing for these top-end jobs, then I'm sure more of them would fall into teaching too. Some of them might even like it.

I'm not suggesting forcing people to study maths and physics at Uni against their will. But more could be done to encourage them. If you look at the graphs, historically way more people elected to study them. Numbers fell dramatically and are only starting to recover. I doubt that there were more people with a vocation for maths and physics in the past.

"A University of Buckingham, UK, study indicates that the number of ‘A’ level exam entries in physics has halved since 1982. As a consequence, since 1994, a quarter of universities which had significant numbers studying physics have stopped teaching the subject.
This year, although 2006 ‘A’ level entries for all subjects increased by 2.8% compared with 2005, physics entries reached a new low with 2.7% fewer UK students. This hardly seems compatible with the Government’s target to increase, on 2005 figures, the number of students in England taking ‘A’ level physics to 45.3% by 2014.
Chemistry did rather better with a 3.1% increase over last year, but it is still 9.1% lower than in 1991. Mathematics and further mathematics recorded increases of 7.5% compared to 2005, but remained 4.5% down on 2001, when the substantial drop in student numbers caused by the restructuring of ‘A’ levels resulted in many students taking ‘A/S’ level mathematics but not continuing to the full ‘A’ level (a good illustration of how well-intentioned innovations can have unwelcome outcomes)."

www.iom3.org/material-matters/the-decline-students-studying-physics

I think that Brian Cox has led a renewed interest in physics and an increased uptake. Someone similarly inspiring could spur girls on to select it, perhaps, without forcing anyone to do anything.

It seems like we need more single sex education. Whether it benefits boys is another matter but it looks to me like girls get sidelined in traditional "boys" subjects when boys are around.

My science lessons were certainly disrupted by a group of boys messing about and taking up most of the teacher's time.

Well I wouldn't have been sidelined in physics if the teacher hadn't been such an arse. My standard grade physics teachers treated everyone the same. My maths and chemistry teachers throughout the school treated people the same, to the extent that it wouldn't have occurred to us that they were supposedly gendered subjects.

It was just the one total arse. And none of the other teachers liked him either.

Another physicist here. I went to two senior schools, one mixed and one girls' (both state comps). I can honestly say that the teachers at both for physics were unfailingly encouraging to me, and it was the negative attitudes of my peers which were harder to ignore. I bumped into some utterly antediluvian attitudes at Uni though! (Apparently I didn't have a head for physics and would do much better getting a job in industry. I have a PhD and 20+ years of experience and if I ever meet that particular Prof again...)

I would love to go into schools and show what a woman in physics can do. But the number of school parties who have come round where I work have been few and far between, and tended to be from the local independent girls' schools. Which probably proves the point...

Noble Why would a lack of communication skills be found out sooner with a maths teacher than any other teacher?

Believe it or not, some people find maths difficult. Really difficult. Intractable. Many people who are super good at maths find this virtually impossible to comprehend.

However, you seem determined to recognise no other view than your own, so have it your own way. Maths and physics teachers get more money than they could possibly get anywhere else and all maths and physics graduates would make magnificent teachers. I must just be imagining my own life.

Maths and physics teachers get more money than they could possibly get anywhere else and all maths and physics graduates would make magnificent teachers. I must just be imagining my own life

No, you seem to be imagining my posts. I've written nothing like that

Our primary school seems to be concentrating on reading and maths and 'science' is an afterthought. And this is a supposedly outstanding infant school in an area (the north east) where there is a lot of high tech jobs and so they have masses of parents who could come into the school as STEM ambassadors.

The pressure comes very early from other children, DD1 was told by a friend that I couldn't be a scientist because I was a woman. Good to know lots of scientists have sciency parents.

When I was at Oxford doing my DPhil the careers department were shit, they had no idea there were jobs in industry for people with PhDs (mine is in biochemistry), all they could recommend for me as a postdoc. I was standing here telling them the pharmaceutical industry recruits thousands of PhDs and yet they had NO information in the careers service at all. They did have an entire bookshelf on management consultancy of course!

It's interesting how some people on here have a negative view of having studied science and the jobs available. I would always encourage the kids to do science, a numerate degree is alway useful to have, I have old uni friends doing every kind of well paid job imaginable. My sister's friends from her English degree have got less well paid, less secure and less flexible jobs so she is now seeing people dropping out of their career when they have kids. None of my science friends have stopped working when they had kids, several of us have husbands (also all scientists) who share the childcare.

Not sure about the pink paper, I would have given a hard time to any teacher who had done that to me. And I would have thought it would increase stereotype threat, far better to print on paper of a neutral colour, green, or yellow or white.

Believe it or not, some people find maths difficult. Really difficult. Intractable. Many people who are super good at maths find this virtually impossible to comprehend

Oh god yes. The prof who taught us subsid. maths on my chemistry degree would say 'this part is intuitively obvious', one Chinese guy in the front row would smile and nod while the rest of us (who all had decent maths A levels) were going .

A teacher needs good communication skills and a good grasp of the subject at, and somewhat above, the level they are teaching at. Probably there are a lot of able girls who are put off the idea of physics or maths by the Sheldon Cooper stereotype when really they'd be much better at teaching (or various other professions using these subjects) than that type. And in the world as it is now, teaching is still one of the most flexible and family-friendly professions.

moonbells can I just say thank you for using one of my favourite words ever, antediluvian. No one else uses it except you and me it would seem.

TheSmallHoofPrintsInTheSnow

Wow - what an appalling and patronising STEM-related video and thanks for drawing my attention to this TheHammaconda. I work hard to encourage young females to consider careers in the motor industry - auto engineering, in workshops and so on. But it's so hard to get the 'girls are equally welcome' message across to the very young ones who, even if they are doing well in sciences, are semi-programmed towards careers like hairdressing (not that there's anything wrong with hairdressing of course ...). Any ideas of how I might 'sell' the motor industry to girls (and Mums) more successfully?

1. If you want primary and secondary schools to change this tell them to get in touch with www.stemnet.org.uk/SEMnet. They can organise local university STEM ambassadors to come into your schools and do amazing fun stuff with your kids.

2. There is a huge shortage of role models for young girls from primary up. There are a few schemes about to try and change this. Check out the WISE awards webpage. The winner of the girl category was amazing - 13 and gave a speech at an international conference! You can read all the shortlisted women and girls here. We should all be campaigning for more positive role models of both genders on TV, films, books etc. (i.e. boys should get the option of being nurses, teachers, SAHDs too)

And in response to something someone said upthread, a career in science is absolutely compatible with family life, just ask my kids...

In response to the horrorshow that is "Science it's a girl thing" (barf!) see this.

foxysteph to get more women into the motor industry, have a look at the resources on the WISE page or the Women's Engineering Society.

.. and I am nothing to do with WISE, I just think what they do is great!

Oh, and I just found this inspiring women campaign...

Some of the things that DD's school does include having a Science and Technology week every year, with various events - people from and visits to local university, talks by speakers such as Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, sessions with former pupils who are now in STEM careers, entering teams for Go4Set and Crest awards at all levels, attending Big Bang and similar(DD is in yr10 and has been to 3 or 4 such already). As I mentioned, it's a girls' school - I would suggest that in a mixed school such events should be held with a careful balance of genders and the Go4Set/Crest teams should be (wholly or partially) single sex.

I just found this - pretty even spread of male and female names.