Where are all the men in primary teaching?

Last week Jennifer Horgan wrote an article in the Irish Examiner about the lack of male primary teachers.

Irish Teacher: We'll change nothing if we don't start working on our ordinary men

It’s a topic that comes up quite a bit in the media, as it’s always good to fill ten minutes of a slow August but it’s been a very long time since anyone has gone to the bother of finding out why. It was in 2005, to be exact.

The percentage of men in the teaching profession has been in steady decline for over 50 years. In 1970, 30% of primary teachers were male. When the study took place in 2005, it has slipped below 20% for the first time. The study expected that the figure would be roughly 15% by now and by 2040, perhaps under 10%. Funnily enough, the figure is higher than it was in 2005, just about, but still low at 20%.

Even if the predictions were slightly more pessimistic in 2005, to be fair, the numbers are still extremely low and, given the figures, it appears to be plateauing at about one-in-five. The first question we need to ask is why.

Unfortunately, we only have an almost 20-year-old report to go on, and in fairness, much has changed in Ireland in 20 years. However, looking at the barriers that were identified, I wouldn’t be too sure much has changed.

1. The perception that primary teaching is a female profession, which discourages males from considering it as a career option.
2. The lack of male role models in primary education, which reinforces the perception that it is a female profession.
3. The negative image of primary teaching, which is seen as unchallenging and unstimulating.
4. The lack of awareness among guidance counsellors and subject teachers of the career options available in primary teaching.
5. The perception that primary teaching involves too much after-school planning and correcting, managing and disciplining up to 30 pupils, and upholding the school’s religious ethos by preparing children for church events.
6. The perception that primary teaching involves catering for young children’s day-to-day needs, maintaining good relationships with parents, and the standard of Irish required for primary teaching.
7. The perception that there would be relatively less support for males from significant others for a decision to go into primary teaching.
8. The possibility of false abuse claims, which is a significant demotivator cited by male teachers.
9. The lack of incentives and support for males to enter and remain in primary teaching, such as scholarships, bursaries, bonuses, mentoring, support groups, networks, professional development programmes, research programmes, leadership programmes, advisory groups, and working groups.
10. The need for Honours Level Irish in the Leaving Cert to enter into Initial Teacher Training.

I hadn’t realised that religion played a part in 2005 when I went on the radio to discuss this because it would have been the first thing I would have mentioned!

Do our schools need more teachers?

None of the barriers will be surprising to most people (though the religion one surprised me) and it was interesting to see, even back then the adage of “if you can’t see it, you can’t be it” rang true. Another interesting finding was how teachers were portrayed in the public eye. Things haven’t gotten much better since.

The Irish language is one of the more controversial things that came out of the study and it was mentioned a lot and it formed quite a few of the recommendations. The report stated an interesting fact:

“Boys were significantly less likely than girls to take Higher Level Irish. Thus the pool of qualified male applicants is reduced even further.”

With that in mind, firstly, the report recommended that the Department of Education put in place measures to encourage more schools to take the Scrúdú Cainte at Junior Certificate Level Gaeilge, which is linked to the emphasis on Gaeilge as a communicative language in the primary school curriculum. Secondly, the report recommended that a scholarship scheme be established for boys and girls to attend Gaeltacht courses, or other courses in Gaeilge, early in the second level cycle, in light of the necessity for students interested in teaching to remain at higher level Gaeilge. Finally, all students in Colleges of Education are required to attend a three-week course in the Gaeltacht to facilitate their proficiency in Irish.

However, despite all the talk of Gaeilge being a significant barrier or disincentive for individuals considering primary teaching as a career, there was no direct evidence to suggest that changing the Gaeilge requirement would lead to the desired result of more male entrants to the Colleges and consequently increase the number of male primary teachers.

An interesting part of the survey looked at where Ireland fitted in internationally. This table is copied from the report.

We can see that Ireland doesn’t fare that well though we are certainly not alone. It would be interesting to see how things have changed in the 20 years since, so I did! Things are really no better — 83% of primary teachers are female across the OECD.

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What can we do? The report gave a large number of recommendations so I won’t list all of them but they fall into 3 main categories:

1. Promoting Teaching as a Career for Males
2. Addressing the Image of Primary Teaching
3. Addressing the Barriers to Men Entering Primary Teaching

Thus far, none of these things have happened since this report. There has been very little in the way of promoting teaching as a profession. When the Teaching Council was set up, it was one of their aims but they have dropped this in recent times.

The image of primary teaching has without doubt become worse. The job is no longer one of prestige.

Sadly none of the barriers have been addressed either.

One interesting thing is that the report fails to mention a very weird paradox when it comes to gender imbalance. When it comes to principal positions, we have roughly gender balance, insofar as about half of principals are male. This points to a different issue — given that females represent 80% of all primary teachers, why are they less represented in leadership positions?

It also has to be pointed out that the lack of males in the profession is just one area where we have issues. The primary teaching profession has an even more worrying problem in terms of its general diversity. As of 2019, 99.7% of primary teachers in Ireland identify as white, Irish. 95% identify as either Catholic or some other form of Christian. How does this stack up?

Right now in Ireland 17% of the population identify as something other than Irish and roughly 20% of the population are not Christian so, at a minimum 20% of the population, would fall into the category of not being “white, Irish and Christian.” I’m going to give a conservative guess that it’s roughly 22%. The following graph shows that representation.

I’m not a statistician so I asked ChatGPT how this fares in terms of diversity and as it tickered along, the results were staggering. I’ll copy and paste the response here.

Men in Teaching:

Difference in representation = Proportion in general population — Proportion in the profession = 0.50–0.20 = 0.30 or 30%

So, men are underrepresented by 30 percentage points in the teaching profession compared to their proportion in the general population.

Relative underrepresentation = (Difference in representation) / (Proportion in general population) = 0.30 / 0.50 = 0.60 or 60%

Men are underrepresented in the teaching profession by 60% relative to their representation in the general population.

Minorities in Teaching:

Difference in representation = Proportion in general population — Proportion in the profession = 0.22–0.003 = 0.217 or 21.7%

Minorities are underrepresented by 21.7 percentage points in the teaching profession compared to their proportion in the general population.

Relative underrepresentation = (Difference in representation) / (Proportion in general population) = 0.217 / 0.22 = 0.986 or 98.6%

Minorities are underrepresented in the teaching profession by 98.6% relative to their representation in the general population.

Comparison:

While men are underrepresented by a larger absolute difference (30 percentage points compared to 21.7 for minorities), when you look at relative underrepresentation, minorities are much more drastically underrepresented. They are underrepresented by 98.6% of their share in the general population, compared to men who are underrepresented by 60% of their share in the general population.

In Ireland, we have a horrible habit in education when we have a problem to solve. In general, we simply do nothing and hope it goes away. Sometimes we explain it away, such as saying that over time things will change. If it doesn’t go away and it looks like we’re about to embarrass ourselves, we seem to try and find Irish solutions to Irish problems. This problem falls into the former because we have the same issues as most countries do trying to recruit male primary teachers. However, we can’t be having these discussion forever.

The issue of the lack of male primary teachers has persisted for many years without significant progress. Despite a slight increase in the percentage of male teachers since 2005, the numbers remain extremely low, hovering around one-in-five. The barriers identified in the past, including the perception of primary teaching as a female profession, the lack of male role models, negative image, and various other factors, still seem to exist today. The need for action is apparent, as the profession requires efforts to promote teaching as a viable career for males, address the image of primary teaching, and overcome the barriers preventing men from entering the field. Without meaningful steps to tackle this issue, it is unlikely that the gender imbalance in primary teaching will be rectified anytime soon.