In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry examining the ‘Factors Driving Educational Attainment’, the Australian Government Primary Principals Association (AGPPA) argues that the absence of male primary teachers is “one of the least-addressed structural problems in Australian education”.

“In many primary schools, boys may go through their entire primary education without a single sustained male role model in a teaching or leadership role.

“This matters not as a question of ideology, but as an evidence-based concern about boys’ engagement, sense of aspiration and belonging,” the association advocates.

Pointing to unnamed research that “consistently identifies that male students benefit from the presence of male educators” – and particularly in cases where positive male role models are absent in the home or community – the AGPPA say the lack of male teachers is sending an implicit message to boys about both the value placed on education and the adults who work in schools.

Yet as education academics Vaughan Cruickshank and Nicholas Hookway note, sweeping international studies show teacher effectiveness is not determined by gender, and that female-dominated primary school teaching is indeed not leading to poorer outcomes for boys.

“Similarly, while male and female teachers may be role models for some students, research suggests students’ role models are more likely to be peers and family members,” they pose in a recent piece for The Conversation.

Previous research has suggested the presence of male teachers may allow particularly vulnerable children to see men as "caring and non-threatening, and to witness men and women interacting in positive, equal, and non-violent ways". 

AGPPA maintains that teaching is simply not an attractive profession for many men, warning entrenched stigma is one deterrent that must be addressed.

“Regrettably, there remains a social stigma for men working with young children in a primary setting that continues to deter entry into the profession and must be actively challenged.”

On this front AGPPA recommends ‘proactive steps’ be taken, including engagement with the media and community, as well as the establishment of clear professional standards that protect teachers and students.

According to the association, other barriers turning prospective male teachers away from the profession include:

  • remuneration: primary teaching salaries do not reflect the complexity, skill or social value of the work, and compare poorly to other professions;
  • limited career progression: the pathway from classroom teacher to leadership is narrow, with few intermediate roles that provide recognition and reward for experienced practitioners; and
  • professional respect: teaching, and particularly primary teaching, is not accorded the professional status it deserves in Australia. This is a deterrent to men who, in many cases, are more acutely sensitive to social perceptions of occupational status.

Yet Victorian school principal Rhys Coulson suggests a focus on teachers’ gender is not the way to go.

Conceeding that this view might not be a widely popular one, the school leader recently took to LinkedIn to urge that “we need to remove the pre-held belief within society that male teachers can somehow be better role models or better equipped to teach children”.

“In my privileged role, I facilitate countless school tours each year, for prospective families (school choice is still a thing in Melbourne schools),” Coulson shares.

“From time to time, I will be asked the question as to how many male teachers are at our school. Families often justify their question by stating it’s ‘good role models for children who might not have a male figure in their lives or for really active boys’.

“My response is always the same. I explain I don’t care how many male, or female, staff we have. I care about getting the best teachers to educate our children. You can be a male and be a terrible role model. Women are just as capable as men in shaping the young lives at our school. If you are a good person, this may come as a shock to some, but it doesn’t matter what gender you are.”

The principal concludes that rather than “worrying about how many blokes there are”, we should get better at raising the status and value of the teaching profession as a whole.

Commenting on the post, learning specialist Jeanette Breen, also from Templestowe Heights Primary School, noted that teachers’ gender has no significant direct effect on students’ academic outcomes.

“Instead, a teacher’s pedagogical quality, subject knowledge, and gender-sensitive relationships dictate student success,” she said.

“Choosing a leader or teacher based on an outdated bias continues to put gender ahead of strong practice and pedagogical knowledge.”

For decades the proportion of male primary teachers across the country has been falling steadily, with a previous warning that they could become ‘extinct’ by 2067 if the decline continues.  

During the 1980s, men made up around 30 per cent of the teaching workforce. Last year just 17.6 per cent of Australian primary educators were male, with the proportion of male classroom teachers expected to be even lower.

“Research tells us male teachers may be worried about social isolation in a female-dominated workplace, uncertainty around dealing with physical contact with students, and expectations to undertake typically masculine roles in a school, such as sports coaching or maths and science teaching,” Cruickshank and Hookway flag.

Lecturer and former primary school teacher Dr Kevin McGrath, from ACU, told the inquiry that despite the widespread adoption of workforce diversity, inclusion, belonging, and representative strategies across our education jurisdictions, there remains “a striking disconnect between policy rhetoric and workforce action”, at least when it comes to the declining number of male teachers.

“In practice, workforce gender composition is acknowledged rhetorically while one of the most significant long-standing gender imbalances within the Australian education workforce remains largely untreated as a structural policy issue,” he argues. 

McGrath notes that attempts to address declining male teacher representation within workforce diversity frameworks have at times generated policy and industrial ‘tensions’.

He notes that when male teachers were included within the NSW Department of Education’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2018–2022 as a workforce diversity priority, the NSW Teachers Federation publicly opposed the initiative on the basis that men remained proportionally overrepresented in promotional positions.

AGPPA represents over 7000 school leaders in 5300 government primary schools across every state and territory, making up more than half of all schools in Australia. 

The association maintains that educational attainment is not determined at Year 12 but rather shaped in the primary years.

“AGPPA submits that Australia cannot meaningfully address differential outcomes in secondary and tertiary education without first addressing the systemic failures occurring in the primary sector,” it tells the inquiry.