World News

Recruitment remains one of the biggest challenges for the sector to solve, and a pressing issue is balancing the gender of the early years workforce, of which just four per cent are men.

The St. Thomas Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority made a $6,000 donation on Thursday, June 24, to the Geraldine Heath Scholarship with the aim of attracting more male educators to classrooms, the University of the Virgin Islands has announced.

Established at UVI in 2008, the four-year scholarship is awarded to an undergraduate male education major enrolled at the institution of higher learning.

For first time, more women teachers in schools than men in India outnumber their male counterparts, according to the Unified District Information on School Education report for 2019-20. Of the 96.8 lakh teachers in the country, 49.2 lakh are women.

In 2012-13, there were 35.8 lakh women teachers across India against 42.4 lakh men — marking a rise of 37% over seven years. In the same period, the number of male teachers rose from 42.4 lakh to 47.7.

On a scale of All Black to astronaut, "kindergarten teacher" is unlikely to make the cut on most Kiwi boys' dream career wishlists.

In New Zealand, early childhood education is traditionally a female-dominated sector where men make up just 2 per cent of the workforce, according to Child Forum.

It has been a testosterone-fuelled start to the year at Lake Tekapo School, with all three teaching roles at the small Mackenzie school filled by males.

With a roll of 33 it is also the first time in acting principal Wayne Facer's 33-year career in education to be at a school totally staffed by men.

Of the 1,342 secondary school teachers in Bolton whose gender was listed in the School Workforce Census last year, 444 were male.

That meant men made up just 33 per cent of the workforce, compared with 38 per cent a decade earlier.

The proportion of male teachers across all of the area’s schools, including primary, nursery and special schools, was even lower, at 27 per cent.

Male babysitters were taken off the books of a leading babysitter placement service agency after a series of shocking predatory pedophile incidents took place while parents were away from their children.

The decision was met by a torrent of criticism that it fans prejudice against male sitters and nursery teachers.

When Yu Zehong started teaching at a kindergarten in Beijing in 2018, some parents asked to transfer their children to other classes.

The parents did not have a good impression of male teachers. Some were worried because of news reports about male staff members sexually assaulting children, while others thought a man would be too strict with the young students, Yu said.

Councillor Lynne Short has called on council officers to ramp up efforts to recruit a greater number of men into the city’s nurseries.

Official figures from the Scottish Social Services Council, which manages Scotland’s early years workforce, shows just 2% of it is male.

The rates vary from as much as 8% of creche staff being male to as little as 1% working in playgroups.

Achieving real gender balance in the early years continues to flummox countries across the world. On average in OECD countries, just 3.2 per cent of pre-primary teachers are male, with the rate lower than 1 per cent in most of Eastern Europe, Israel and Portugal.

For some years now, researchers from several countries have formed an international network on the issue of men, women and gender balance in the ECEC work force. Since 2010, members of the network organised research symposia on the annual conferences of EECERA. 2012, the network initiated a Special Interest Group within EECERA.

Many parents and educators want more male professionals in day-care centres and kindergartens – however, men have greater difficulty to get into daycare centers in permanent employment. This is the result of a new study of the Delta-Institute for Social – ecological research.

Men in primary schools put up with unfair comments about their health, appearance and career progress, says this teacher.

At the same time as efforts rightly focus on getting more women in leadership positions and into male-dominated industries, there is also a movement to encourage more men into the careers dominated by women.

In particular, the caring professions are bereft of men. Early years teaching and nursery workers are almost exclusively female, as is nursing and the social care workforce.

This is despite the fact that vulnerable people sometimes request the same gender care for them because of the intimate nature of the relationship.

Norland College, the specialist provider of childcare training and education based in Bath, has celebrated the first male degree graduates in the college’s 126 year history, at its annual graduation ceremony.

Liam Willett, 21, and Harry Pratt, 21, have become the first males to complete the college’s BA (Hons) degree in Early Years Development and Learning.