Men disappearing from classrooms in both the U.S. and U.K
Here’s an interesting policy brief on male teachers from the Center for Evaluation & Education Policy at Indiana University. The papers have good trend numbers and cite the states with the greatest proportion of male teachers (Kansas at 33%, compared the national average of 24%.
Things aren’t that much differerent in England, as this article from The Independent shows:
Teaching is becoming an increasingly female-dominated profession with men making up fewer than one in four new recruits, official figures revealed yesterday.
Despite a multimillion-pound campaign to attract more men into teaching, the latest statistics reveal a widening gap between the sexes among those gaining teaching qualifications from universities and teacher training colleges.
In 2006-07, fewer than a quarter (23.8 per cent) of teaching qualifications were obtained by men, according to figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency - the lowest figure in five years. This was a fall of 1.5 per cent from the previous year. Meanwhile, between 2005-06 and 006-07, the number of women qualifying as teachers from higher education rose by 2 per cent, from 23,865 to 24,335, while the number of men fell 5.7 per cent, from 8,065 to 7,610.
The figures will be a blow to the Government, which has repeatedly tried to persuade men to train as teachers. The former education secretary Alan Johnson announced a drive to get more men into the profession in March 2007 after concern that just 16 per cent of teachers in primary schools, and 46 per cent in secondary schools, were male.
Mr Johnson said there was a need for more men in primary school teaching so they could provide role models, arguing: “Our schools should contain more male role models, such as ‘old boys’ or local boys made good.”
Is that right, that males are needed for models to help turn boys into men, control classrooms and turn around faltering academic performance among boys? (In England, the gender gaps are very bit as stark as those found in the United States.) Read the anchor piece in the Education Policy Brief by Shaun Johnson. There may be good reasons to encourage men to teach, but they aren’t the reasons you might be assuming. See his conclusions on Page 3.
