Sirs make strides in a Miss world...

A NATIONAL drive has been launched to attract more male primary school teachers. With the start of the new term this week reporter Karen Doherty looks at one Chadderton school which is bucking the national trend for all-women staff rooms.

BEN Spedding had no doubts about trading in his old job for a new career in teaching.

He worked in sales for BMW and explained: “I wanted more out of work. I wanted something different, something more rewarding.

“I was perhaps influenced by my mum. She was a primary school teacher and loved it for 30 years.”

The 28-year-old is one of seven male members of staff at Yew Tree Primary School and just the type of person the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) wants to attract.

There has been a steady rise in the number of male teachers accepted on to primary training courses while inquiries from men have risen by 30 per cent in the last year, thought to be linked to the recession.

But it seems that primaries are still seen as a traditional woman’s domain — except perhaps at head teacher level — as only 13 per cent of their teachers are men.

Now the TDA has launched a drive to get more men into infant and junior classes and provide a vital role model for young boys.

Ben admitted that some people were initially dubious about his career choice and said: “At first they all said that it was going to be full of women talking about ‘Coronation Street’.

“But as I have progressed many of them are very jealous. They understand how much I love my job. The stigma has gone and it’s something to be admired.

“When I left the motor trade, working with 40 men talking about cars all day, you can imagine what they were saying, but I have I have never looked back.”

The Year 4 teacher and modern foreign languages leader only intended to stay at Yew Tree for a year as he commutes from Burnley.

But he has now enrolled on a course for potential school leaders and added: “I love the school and the difference I can make here. I am not even looking elsewhere.

“At some schools where I went on placement, I have been the only male teacher surrounded by 10 female staff. It sounds better than it sometimes is!”

A survey of more than 800 men carried out last year revealed that 35 per cent felt that having a male teacher had challenged them to work harder at primary school.

Pupils were also more likely to have approached male teachers with problems such as bullying.

This was backed by Dr Tanya Bryan, a consultant clinical psychologist who has worked on TV shows such as “House of Tiny Tearaways”.

“The need for strong male role models as constants in the lives of young children is more apparent than ever in the light of increasing numbers of children facing the breakdown of the traditional family unit, growing up in single parent homes or not having a male figure at home,” she said.

“Male primary school teachers can often be stable and reliable figures in the lives of the children that they teach. They inspire children to be more confident, to work harder and to behave better.”

However, the TDA said the campaign was not about being anti-woman, but getting a mix of role models in primary classrooms.

And Yew Tree head teacher Martine Buckley agreed: “To some extent the governors and I try to create that balance, although obviously we can’t circumnavigate the statutory stuff.

“We are always aware we want this balance of young teachers, more experienced, teachers from the ethnic minority communities, men and women.”

Senior teaching assistant Minesh Mistry is part of that balance along with business manager Steve Mould, deputy head teacher Rais Bhatti and teachers Shumel Rahman, John Taylor and Simon Howard.

Minesh (28) studied business and information systems at Salford University and joined the school as an ICT technician.

But he admitted that teaching wasn’t his ambition: “It was more IT trouble-shooting which was my background.

“I originally wanted to work for a big firm but this came along and I thought ‘let’s go for it’.”

He now teaches ICT throughout the school and is being encouraged to join the graduate teacher programme: “I enjoy working with the children.

“With IT everything develops really quickly, for example with the younger children I teach them about spreadsheets. I learnt to do spreadsheets in college when I was 18!”

Minesh thinks there is no stigma attached to being male primary school teachers. He added: “The majority of my friends are all in teaching, but most of them in secondaries. We all share stories and we can have a laugh about it.”

But do men have a different approach to teaching? Mrs Buckley explained current educational thinking was that female teachers tended to discipline boys for the rough and tumble which men see as being a part of boys growing up.

On the other hand, parents tend to believe that male teachers discipline children more.

Mrs Buckley said: “I do not find that’s true. They perhaps approach behaviour in a different way. A lot of it is down to personality.”

As for the suggestion that men bring more sport to schools she added: “Three of our male members of staff are mad keen on football and run football teams.

“The boys do like that and those who like football tend to look up to them. But at least two of them are into IT and do extracurricular things around IT. We have also got a woman on the staff who runs football teams as well.”