The introduction of a new quota system to attract more men into teaching appears to have been ruled out despite a new report which confirms the increasing feminisation of the profession.
Only 18 per cent of primary teachers are male, compared to 30 per cent in the 1970s. At St Patrick's teacher training college in Drumcondra, only about 50 of the 400-plus final-year students are male.
Despite these trends, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin said yesterday the introduction of positive discrimination towards males - such as the use of a quota system - could run counter to equality legislation. The male teacher, she said, was already a rare species. "We are working to make sure he is not extinct."
The Minister was speaking at the launch of a new report which recommends a promotional campaign to encourage more males into teaching.
The requirement for honours Irish in the Leaving Cert is seen as one of the main barriers for men entering teaching. Last year, only 5,000 male students took higher-level Irish, about half the figure for female students.
The report stops short of proposing the abolition of the honours Irish requirement. Instead, it calls for greater support for higher-level Irish.
Olwyn Enright, Fine Gael spokeswoman on education, last night said the new proposals were "too vague and do not examine the specific disincentives to males entering teaching".
Students, she said, who might have achieved a high mark on the ordinary-level paper, were ineligible for entry to teacher-training, regardless of their aptitude for teaching or the results achieved in other subjects. The current situation ruled out tens of thousands of school-leavers every year from entry to teacher training colleges.
The new proposals were drawn up by the Primary Education Committee, which was asked to propose new ways to arrest the increasing feminisation of teaching. The committee was comprised of representatives of the Colleges of Education, the Mater Dei Institute of Education, the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, the Irish National Teachers Organisation and the Department of Education.
Other recommendation include setting five- and 10-year targets for increasing the number of male primary school teachers; and further research in a number of key areas.
The report was launched at St Aidan's CBS, Whitehall, Dublin, alma mater of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Guest speakers included Dublin senior football captain Paddy Christie, who is a primary school teacher in Our Lady of Victories school in Ballymun. He told students: "For me, the best part of primary teaching is the variety."
