IPPN

Published: 16 August 2005

MORE male students must be encouraged to enter the teaching profession to avoid a gender imbalance at primary schools across the country, Education Minister Mary Hanafin said yesterday.

Ms Hanafin raised concerns as two out of every five primary schools in the country have no male teachers and many others have just one male teacher.

"I am concerned about the fact that the teaching profession is becoming completely feminised on the basis that I don't think any profession should be just one gender or the other," she said.

"There are about 4,500 students that have applied to do primary school teaching and they are waiting for their Leaving Certificate results this year, but of that, only 781 of them are boys."

Ms Hanafin said she would be acting over evidence career guidance teachers at secondary schools were more likely to recommend teaching as a profession to female rather than male students.

"Any work setting where it is all one gender can be intimidating for the minority, and two in every five schools in the country have no male teacher at all and many of the others just have one male teacher.

"Now that is not a healthy situation in any profession," she said.

Ms Hanafin said the starting salary for a primary school teacher with an honours degree, at almost €34,000, would rival the starting salaries of engineers, architects and other professions.

"The timescale for reaching the top of the scale is quite long but, on the other hand, people would say that in teaching, you have a greater work-life balance, that you have longer holidays, and you have an opportunity to teach anywhere in Ireland," Ms Hanafin told RTÉ Radio.

She said she was awaiting a report from an expert group on the issue of men in teaching before launching a campaign to encourage more males into the profession.