As part of my PPP, I'm looking into teaching as an option for myself and I am applying for teaching assistant places in greater manchester. To better understand his aims of reaching out to male pupils and encourage them to accept extra help with their studies.
I began to explore public education sector data. In 2011, the BBC reported that one in four (27.2%) primary schools in England had no registered male teachers and that only 12% of primary school teachers are male, information which I found surprising as I didn't thing the divide was so large.
The Education Secretary at the time, Michael Gove, cited a worry of “teacher-pupil contact” being a “legal minefield”. He also expressed concern about the lack of “male role models” for school students of all ages and the need for “male authority figures who can display both strength and sensitivity”. In an attempt to encourage more males to train as teacher, Gove create a “troops to teacher programme” for ex-soldiers. The table below is taken from the DofE website (Main Tables: SFR21/2015). It shows the ratios of male:female teachers in the public sector. The numbers move more towards equilibrium as it moves through to secondary education. However, at a historical best in 2014, males accounted for 36.25% of qualified teachers in public secondary education.
The table below comes from the same DofE document but shows the numbers of Teaching Assistants. Here, the imbalance is clear as men account for only 16.09% of teaching assistants in public secondary education:
The numbers for academies, which all schools will be converted to in the near future, are much almost identical in regards to gender ratio.
This table below shows how many qualified teachers, in each age group, have never been in public education sector service.The male numbers increased more drastically as the financial crisis eased than for females, showing that more males were seeking refuge from the crisis in teaching.
Perhaps this hints at females being more risk averse in general, seeking the safety of a public career than the unpredictability of a private sector job; whereas men are more risk orientated, possibly driven by the need to be the stereotypical ‘bread-winner’ for their family.
Effects
There has been plenty of articles, debates and opinion expressed on the effects of this imbalance on students’ grades. It is a well-established fact that male students do worse than their female peers and many groups have pointed at the imbalance in gender of teachers.
A phrase not uncommon in education, especially in disadvantaged areas, is “boys lack male role models”. As adult males are seemingly intimidated by the idea of gender stereotypes, teenage males presume that learning is orientated towards females. It is a self-reinforcing cycle.
