Do we need Gender quotas for Primary Teachers with 84% now female?

[peter barrins]

I know parents who would discourage their sons becoming primary teachers out of fear of malicious allegations arising at the end of an honourable career. Dirt sticks and there are precedents for such things happening.

I don't know how prevalent such attitudes are but they're certainly a factor.

Absolute rot. Personally, primary teaching as a career would have bored me to death, and my parents would not have influenced this one jot. The majority of primary teacher have always been female - where I grew up the only male teachers tended to the principal teacher with the remainder female.

[Norman Bates]

Absolute rot. Personally, primary teaching as a career would have bored me to death, and my parents would not have influenced this one jot. The majority of primary teacher have always been female - where I grew up the only male teachers tended to the principal teacher with the remainder female.

Are you sure about that? Maybe things have changed a lot. But while all my infant school teachers were female; those in primary were all male - except for singing and elocution. All secondary teachers were male.

[Half Nelson]

Absolute rot. Personally, primary teaching as a career would have bored me to death, and my parents would not have influenced this one jot. The majority of primary teacher have always been female - where I grew up the only male teachers tended to the principal teacher with the remainder female.

..Luckily for any prospective pupils, since teaching good manners should be high on every teacher's agenda.

[blokesbloke]

I never approve of gender quotas so I would of course not support them for teachers.

However, it's true to say that when a profession is dominated by women it doesn't seem to be generally seen as a problem, only when men dominate one.

The organisation where I work is always trying to get more women into "male dominated" departments but the department I work in seems be at least 80% female and nobody has ever pointed it out, seen it as a problem etc.

I haven't but I don't think it is a problem - I assume that for whatever reason more women applied for the job, or that more women who applied for the job were found to be suitable. I know they employed me, so they obviously don't have a policy of not hiring men for this department, it's just how it pans out.

Still, it does annoy me that since I have that attitude to my department, nobody seems to share a similar attitude for the "male dominated" departments.

[bokuden]

I never approve of gender quotas so I would of course not support them for teachers.

However, it's true to say that when a profession is dominated by women it doesn't seem to be generally seen as a problem, only when men dominate one.

The organisation where I work is always trying to get more women into "male dominated" departments but the department I work in seems be at least 80% female and nobody has ever pointed it out, seen it as a problem etc.

I haven't but I don't think it is a problem - I assume that for whatever reason more women applied for the job, or that more women who applied for the job were found to be suitable. I know they employed me, so they obviously don't have a policy of not hiring men for this department, it's just how it pans out.

Still, it does annoy me that since I have that attitude to my department, nobody seems to share a similar attitude for the "male dominated" departments.

It would be interesting if somebody could link to the average pay in "male dominated" professions/areas compared to "female dominated" ones. For example, do primary school teachers earn more or less than their secondary school counterparts? Or is it roughly equal?

[fionnmccool]

I do not believe there should be quotas. Clearly, as a career, primary teaching does not seem to appeal to men and quotas won't alter this

In an age of massive unemployment , job insecurity, emigration and lowered standards of living , thousands of men would bite the hand off you to become primary teachers. People would clean out your jacks if it could provide for their families. Taking a teaching job would be a million times better and with fantastic holidays too. Theres a perception however that women have this profession totally sewn up.

A boy, generally, does not seek a male role model or look to their father until they enter adolescence - usually after the age for primary school.

I call BS on that. Little boys love their fathers, always look to them for advice, examples of how to behave and share much more in common with them than with their mothers. And they know they are male almost from the moment they can walk and talk.
My father and grandfather were extremely important and interesting for me since I was in diapers and frankly while I loved granny and mom , from a male point of view they were boring, conservative and into frilly girly boring things in comparison to dad and grandad.

[bokuden]

I call BS on that. Little boys love their fathers, always look to them for advice, examples of how to behave and share much more in common with them than with their mothers. And they know they are male almost from the moment they can walk and talk.
My father and grandfather were extremely important and interesting for me since I was in diapers and frankly while I loved granny and mom , from a male point of view they were boring, conservative and into frilly girly boring things in comparison to dad and grandad.

I agree.

[firefly123]

I would have thought 84% females on your course would attract many males Might not be the sort to teach kids though!

[stakerwallace]

It would be interesting if somebody could link to the average pay in "male dominated" professions/areas compared to "female dominated" ones. For example, do primary school teachers earn more or less than their secondary school counterparts? Or is it roughly equal?

PST and SCT are on a common basic scale: some small disparities exist because usually secondary teachers commenced a point ahead on the pay scale than PST, as they often spend an extra year in college. As far as I know this has now been changed. Promotional opportunites are probably better in primary schools as there are far mor of them and hence more principalships. I was a teacher up to 19 years ago and had a friend who, because he was willing to move around, had held three pricipalships in his career, and as each school was bigger than the previous one, hence he earned a greater allowance each time. The numbers applying for principalships has always been low enough.

[J.V.STALIN]

I don't see how a quota would work tbh. Clearly the problem is that not enough males are entering the primary teaching degree course.
The only war to realistically solve the problem would be to incentivise males to become primary teachers - perhaps something like whats being done to incentivise females to enter into level 8 engineering courses.