Aontú Midwest Representative Calls For Gender Quotas in Teaching

An Aontú representative for Castletroy has proposed the use of gender quotas in primary and secondary teaching to boost the number of males in the profession. This comes after Mary Immaculate College launched a campaign last week to encourage males to pursue primary teaching as a career in light of the historically low number of male teachers. The latest available government figures show that males account for just 15.4pc of primary school teachers and 31.2pc of secondary school teachers with the numbers falling even further when other school staff members such as special needs assistants and cleaners are included. Eric Nelligan, Education Spokesperson for Aontú, suggests that gender quotas could be adopted in teaching as they have been in politics and other lines of work.