Men are becoming an endangered species in many primary schools. Louise Holden reports on the 'feminisation' of teaching - and on those who work amongst women.
Women and children only? If you're under 12 in Ireland, you have a one in five chance of encountering a man in your classroom. You have only a 50 per cent chance of coming across a man in your school. The rate of male participation in primary teaching is dropping so rapidly that the INTO fears a man-free national school system by the year 2035.
In its most recent report on gender representation in primary teaching, the INTO reveals that just 17.5 per cent of primary teachers are male. That figure has fallen from 32 per cent in 1970 - by five per cent each decade. If this trend continues, primary education will soon be utterly feminised.
Is this such a bad thing? There is no evidence to suggest that boys taught by women suffer academically. Nevertheless, there is unease in the profession about this trend.
In sectors dominated by women, working conditions have been known to suffer. In Israel, a rise in the number of female elementary teachers to more than 90 per cent has been accompanied by a deterioration in pay and conditions.
Women's professions are historically undervalued and women employees are less vigorous advocates for change. As it stands, the average salary of a female primary teacher is lower than a male's, and women are proportionately under-represented in managerial roles.
Apart from this professional concern, the social implications of the shrinking pool of male primary teachers need to be examined. The microsociety that a child inhabits - home and school - gives him his first understanding of how the world works. A lack of male role models may be a particular issue for the growing number of children from households where the father is absent.
Gender imbalance in teaching is an international phenomenon. State of Ontario figures show that one in five teachers at primary/junior level is male and that the high percentage of male teachers over the age of 55 indicated that the gender gap is becoming a "chasm". In the US, the proportion of male teachers is at a 40-year low.
In Australia, the Catholic Education Office of the Archdiocese of Sydney applied for a temporary exemption under the Australian Sex Discrimination Act to allow it to take positive action to encourage male high school students to become primary school teachers. The Teacher Training Agency in Britain has undertaken a campaign to seek to increase the number of male applications for teaching. The campaign includes advertisements with slogans such as "Could you be a male model?" The Minister for Education and Science Noel Dempsey has established a committee to advise him on strategies and initiatives which might be undertaken to increase the number of males entering primary teaching here.
Boys' barriers to entering the teaching profession are both social and academic. Clearly, the dwindling supply of male teacher role models is exacerbating the problem year on year. There is a huge selection of career paths available and teaching is not regarded as a well-paid profession by private sector standards.
Academically, boys are at a disadvantage. The points for teacher training are high and boys are consistently scoring lower in the Leaving Cert.
The feminisation of teaching may be a worldwide trend, but Irish boys face a peculiarly Irish obstacle. A Grade C in Honours Irish is required for primary teaching in this country. At the 2001 Leaving Certificate higher level papers, two-thirds of the exam candidates taking honours Irish were girls, and of those who took that level, 81.6 per cent of girls received grade C or better, compared to 74 per cent of the smaller number of boys.
For this reason, a large cohort of potential male teachers rule themselves out of the profession long before they fill out a CAO form. However, even those male students who do apply for primary teacher training are subject to a cull. More than 15 per cent of applicants to undergraduate B. Ed. programmes are male. Currently, less than 10 per cent are being allocated places.
What happens to those would-be male teachers between application and allocation of places? Lower achievement in the Leaving Cert and most specifically in Irish are keeping them out. As the INTO puts it, the Gaeilge requirement serves in part as a "gender-biased filter".
Is Irish the sacred cow that needs to be slain? Lowering the Irish requirement is one possible measure. The Department recently lowered the standard in the Irish exam taken by people who have completed teacher training outside the Republic.
Others measures put forward by the INTO include positive discrimination in favour of male teachers: this practice is already employed to maintain minimum levels of entrants from the Gaeltacht and the Church of Ireland. In both cases, students from these quarters had entry levels set at 40 CAO points below the standard in 2003.
A career promotion campaign aimed directly at male students might also bolster numbers. Teachers' unions also maintain that better pay and conditions in the sector would make teaching more attractive to both sexes.
In the daily dealings of the classroom, little boys are not suffering for the lack of a male presence. However, as a society, we look dimly on professions where one or other sex predominates. There is a broader issue of equality in the marketplace to consider - some willing male candidates are clearly losing out. Students are socialised in the school and home, and balanced exposure to both sexes is healthy and necessary.
The culture of a school can only be enhanced by a good mix of men and women working together to give children a positive first taste of life beyond the family.
