Primary Education: Teachers

(asked on 13th April 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of men in primary teaching.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 22nd April 2021

The Government aims to attract and retain highly skilled and talented individuals, including men, through effective pay structures, financial incentives, and by ensuring that teaching remains a sustainable and rewarding career.

The teacher pay increases in recent years are making a substantial difference to the competitiveness of the early career pay offer. This academic year, starting salaries have already increased by 5.5%, with the majority of other teachers receiving 2.75%. The Department is also committed to increasing starting salaries nationally to £30,000.

Alongside this, the Department is introducing a new application service for teacher training, which has been designed and extensively tested with a diverse range of potential applicants, to ensure it helps remove barriers to potentially great teachers, including men, applying for initial teacher training (ITT) courses.

The Department’s ‘Every Lesson Shapes A Life’ recruitment campaign is targeted at audiences of students, recent graduates, and potential career changers inclusive of all genders, and we take every effort to ensure that our advertising is fully reflective of this across the full range of marketing materials we use.

As well as recruiting new teachers, it is important the Department retains male teachers in primary schools. To do this, we are working to make sure that all new entrants to teacher training have the best possible start to the early stage of their career.

This is why, from September 2020 onwards, new trainee teachers will be entitled to at least three years of evidence-based professional development and support, starting with ITT, based on the new ITT Core Content Framework (2019). The new ITT Core Content Framework sets out a core minimum entitlement for all trainees describing the fundamental knowledge and skills that all new entrants to the profession need to effectively teach and support all children.

Following on from their training, from this September all new teachers will be entitled to two years of funded high-quality professional development including the support of a dedicated mentor, through the Early Career Framework reforms. Schools will receive additional funding so new teachers can spend time away from the classroom for this extra training and mentoring. Together, these reforms will ensure that all new teachers will develop the skills, expertise and confidence they need to thrive in the classroom.

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