Male teachers in primary school

[anawee23]

Hi Ladies,
Just wondering if you would like to give me your opinions on male teachers in primary schools and whether you think there are enough of them, feel free to be honest and straightforward.

I am currently training to be a teacher and have the task of researching and discovering what parents and adults in general think about Male primary school teachers and whether there is a connection to the bad publicity and the fact that there are less than female teachers?

I have done all my research regarding statistics and facts and figures, but would love to know how the general public and parents feel about this matter/topic.

Thank you for participating, I look forward to reading your replies.

Absolutely brilliant is what we think about male primary teachers in this household. Quite a few male teachers at DSs' school and they are really great - boys really enjoyed time in their classes.

No-we need lots more and we especially need them in the foundation and key stage1.

The question is not do we want more male teachers in primary, the question is how do we get more male teachers in primary?

It would be a good start if people didn't think it 'odd' (or worse) if men want to work with young DCs.

Our village primary has always had one male teacher, but has struggled to retain them.

I have personally found that it has helped with the cliquey, bitchy atmosphere in the school amongst the female teaching staff (sorry, but it is the truth and not stereotyping unfortunately). Two are sisters and the TA's are their friends and they even call it "their school".

The male teacher is okay, personable enough, and has been great setting up a football club for the boys etc. On a more negative note, he is very young and this has shown in his dealings with sensitive issues (social, court etc) where he has been extremely clumsy in his rush to "get rid" of the matter.

Sadly, I don't think he will remain long - other support staff say he is remaining in his room at break times etc avoiding the cliquey element and I really think the head needs to deal with this rather than losing a positive element in the school yet again.

I think it is vital that there are male teachers in primary schools and I find that the children really benefit.

Interesting thread as the school I work in is recruiting at the moment.

We are wrestling with the 'need to have a male teacher' thing: the female applicants on the shortlist are 'better' - they are better qualified, they have written better applications, they come with better references, they have better grades from their training, they have taught better observed lessons BUT the male teachers are male, we have a large number of adult male-less families and there is SUCH a strong feeling that we should redress the gender balance that we are having the balance this up against the fact that they are 'less good' at the actual teaching part of the job.

(Also, as an aside, the male teacher my son has had was an arrogant, lazy, couldn't-be-bothered-to-keep-records type who knew full well that as a male treacher his rarity value kept him safe from the competency proceedings that would otherwise have come his way)

@teacherwith2kids

Appoint a woman. I do, passionately, believe that a school is more that the classroom competences of its teachers-a variety of approaches and experiences of life benefits everyone. But 'men' do not come with set competences or abilities-the 'difference' and extra value they offer needs assessing on individual grounds, not assumed.

The main problem I have faced since returning to teaching is not that people think I'm a kiddy-fiddler: it's that parents and staff believe I have some special competence dealing with boys or football. Of the 5 kids I clicked best with this year, 4 were girls. I spend Fridays running a football team, despite having little technical skill of the sort required to develop young players of either sex. This year I observed a brilliant male trainee-one of the most caring, gentle, funny and professional teachers you can imagine, whose departure drew tears form kids. He was also asthmatic, fat, slightly camp and a very unrigid disciplinarian. My post is now permanent, so next year I'm running cookery and Italian clubs. He, I hope, will get a job where his passion for art and chess will benefit his school. Both of us will find life miserable if the standards we are held to and what we are supposed to offer is determined not by thinking on us as teachers and members of the school community, but by looking at the gender box on the Equal Ops form.

And that, in some ways, is the other side of the 'recruitment' coin: if men are to teach at primary level all men, with many talents, need to consider whether they can hack it. You can't go for 'fatherly role models who can kick a ball about', or demand that any man you appopint fills that gap, and expect to either attract or recruit men who are equally talented at tecahing but have different qualities.

Adela,

Thing is, that's what we want to do. But the governors and parents, like most in this thread, are passionately in the 'we need more male teachers' camp, so we have to be very, very sure of our ground to be able to withstand the barrage of criticism that will come our way if we appoint a woman.

The last 3 positions we've filled we numbered all applications then removed the sheet with the name and personal details and short listed purely on the quality of the application to remove any possible bias.

Mrz, we are at the 'observed lesson and interview' stage and it's quite hard to hide the gender of the candidates at this point!

Well in all three cases no males got through the short listing stage so it was never an issue for us.

teacherwith2kids

Ask them 'why?'. I'm not necessarily against a school thinking beyond siomple classroom performance and believing it needs to appoint a certain kind of person or one who offers something different: being a member of a school's teaching staff is not simply about teaching brilliant lessons day-in day-out (although its a goal to aim for..). But if you are being asked to appoint someone to fill a particular need that need should be clear to all. Use me as an example if you like-ask how appointing a multi-lingual PhD educated poshyboots with a passion for food and Playmobil is really going to meet the implicit criteria of 'man' suggested. I offer far more 'female' skills than many women, but am a pretty crap 'man' by the criteria aimed for.

I would also add that what is being proposed is illegal-you can appoint on grounds of 'diversity' if other factors are equal, and can ask for something which may be gender-biased if it is a requirement of the job (strength for fire fighters). here you might argue 'role model' falls into this, since it is one of the factors for QTS and hence recognised as part of the job, but it is a minor one.

It's also hugely counter-productive. When I was first in teaching I left after a year because I was given Yr6 and the G&T group on the assumption that's that what men with Cambridge firsts teach, and that was what my mentors told me to go for. I got my post for next year confirmed last week, having done maternity cover for half a year in Yr1, in effect a very lengthy job interview. I think I'm quite good, and have been tested where it matters, but doubt I would be teaching the age group I want to if I hadn't proved myself during that leave. Having a long-term aim to appoint a gender-mix to the staff is not necessarily bad, using it to appoint people who are wrong for post is to nobody's advantage-the school I left many moons ago could have appointed a woman to the job I got, then me to Yr1 the next year (there was a vacancy but i was told I hadn't been appointed to do that) and had a very good YR1 teacher for over ten years, but rushed into getting an unhappy Yr6 one for one.

Yikes to the stereotypes. We do have male teachers who are 'better' with some of the boys than the women are, but we also have female teachers who are 'better' with other boys than the men are. Its utterly individual.
Ditto skills - we have a great Y1 male teacher who does great things with origami and music, a Y6 male teacher who does great things with sport, and equal diversity amongst the women.
I personally like the fact that we have men AND women teaching in the school, but it has to be the best person for the job at any given time, surely?

DD (yr 4) currently has the only male teacher in her 10 class primary and she also had him in Yr 2 as they swap the teachers every couple of years.

I think there should definitely be more male primary school teachers, especially as parenting seems to have gone soft and kids taking the pee a lot more.

A male teacher balances their education and the way they are taught.

I guess, unless they are younger, and just leaving uni, then salary-wise, teaching isn't a well paid career to go into for men retraining if they've been on a higher salary. DH would love to go into teaching but would have to take a huge pay cut and we just can't afford to. I do think that older men with life experience could be great role models though for little ones, especially the boys.

Can all those posting about 'role models' here please explain what they mean-the term is used so frequently but rarely criticised, and it's clearly the key term form what you all say.

The idea of a 'role model' for adults is one thing-adults have formed identities and are confined by them. A woman looking to head a FTSE100 company might well see obstacles ahead not there for a man, and need a model of how to overcome them, especially if that model is not just 'acting like a man' but someone who reconciles cherished ideas of femininity with success. That I understand.

But is an eight-year-old boy struggling with a composition really wrestling with how to reconcile acheivement there with masculinity? I'm not naive enough to believe social pressures based on gender aren't extreme at that age, but praise from authority, recognition of talent irrespective of gender, is just as good a way of breaking them down in a classroom context as tacitly accepting them. And if the operative view really is 'boys need men', 'girls need women', isn't appointing more men just screwing over girls struggling to reconcile achievement in maths with their ideas of femininity?

Underneath all this lies a somewhat perverse view that 'boys' are a group who struggle, based on long-term collapses in their performance (dating back not to 'feminised' curricula and coursework but to the 1950s in selective tests and to the 1970s generally (perhaps not coincidentally because many saw professional employment beyond the home as practical for the first time for generations). Because if gender of teacher really matters, then arguing for more men is just stating that the boy struggling to show his excellence at writing is basically more of a problem than the girl struggling to show hers at maths. And, given the way society is likely to empower both of them, that doesn't really seem the key moral problem to me.

Perosnal, not professional, view, obviously.

Adela, you are wordy but very well put.

A recently qualified male teacher who was job hunting, told me that he was putting lots of phrases like 'As a man...' in his application forms as he knew there was a demand for men. I'm sure he's not the only one. Very hard to not know if a candidate is a man or woman.

Another thing I find frustrating is the belief by some parents that if their child has challenging behaviour they need a male teacher because they are stricter and better at discipline. There are some brilliant male teachers out there, but just being male doesn't mean behaviour management is a strength.

I agree more "mature" men go into secondary instead of primary. Is it the mind-set that the older the year group the more important the job? As in Year 6 is harder / more important / promotion compared to Reception in some, less informed minds.

If I were to use the words 'role model' in the context of this thread, I think I would be thinking of some of the young lads in dd's school who don't think its cool for men to read books/sew/sing/think a lot, unless they see them doing it. Kids as young as 3 tend to identify with their own gender, positively or negatively, so I do think there is some gender specific 'behaviour modelling' that happens - for want of a better phrase. Also, of course, lots of non-gender specific ditto.
I agree about the discipline/behaviour thing though - it depends totally on the individual child, the individual teacher, and the individual situation as to who handles/impacts on a specific behaviour the most effectively. Not gender.

Not enough.

Also, I think girls need male 'role models' as much as boys do - and both need female 'role models' as well. In other words, they need to see adults of both sexes 'modelling' respectful and positive behaviour - and relationships. Ideally.

Its a bit weird, if you think about it, having a school with all male or all female adults running around in it - if you see the school as a microcosm of society.

Both my dd's have had really positive experiences with (different) male teachers; they have enjoyed the humour both brought to the job. Impossible to generalise of course, it depends on the individual teacher, male or female.

There are 4 male teachers at DS1+2's school. They are all lovely, very professional, and all the kids want to be in their classes.

It can only be a good thing to have some male influences from a young age?

What I would really like to see is a shift that makes primary teaching more appealing and accessible to the best male (and female) teachers. This would also raise the status of the profession and be of benefit for female teachers as well. Do people think that primary teaching lacks status because there are few men or few men enter because it lacks status? If the job was appealing and prestigious as high level industry, banking, law, medicine, etc. it would attract the best candidates into training. There would be more applicants for training and only those with a real passion and aptitude for working with young children could be selected from the wider pool of both men and women.

Regardless, I think such a huge cultural shift and think it is almost impossible to achieve. Especially as this would also cost money ...