Male teacher scholarships back on agenda

By Siobhan Callan

The Howard Government is still determined to discriminate by providing scholarships for male teachers.

The Federal Government is continuing to attempt to amend Anti-Discrimination legislation to allow for teaching scholarships to be provided specifically to potential male teachers.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock reintroduced legislation to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 at the first sitting of parliament since the Howard Government was returned to office on October 9.

The Sex Discrimination Amendment (Teaching Profession) Bill 2004 supposedly aims to increase the proportion of male teachers in schools, in particular in primary schools where currently across Australia approximately 21 percent of teachers are male. (In secondary schools approximately 45 percent of teachers across Australia are male.)

In a press release issued on November 17, Mr Ruddock asserted that the Government believes that "increasing the numbers of male teachers in the profession is important in providing male and female students with more male role models in schools".

This legislation is an ongoing example of the wedge politics of the Howard Government as well as the continued attempts to create division that was such a feature of the Coalition Government's policies before the election.

Such a statement not only reflects a continuing attack on the teaching profession (the majority of whom are women) but also fails to address the crucial issues in terms of attracting and retaining teachers in our public education system.

The salaries and status of teachers in the public education system, as well as teacher workload, play a significant role in the resignation of approximately 25 percent of public education teachers in their first five years of teaching.

The proposed Federal Government scholarship of $2000 for male first year primary teachers will have little impact on keeping the teachers in the system that are leaving in their first few years of teaching due to workload burnout combined with a knowledge that their counterparts are able to find employment with both higher salary and higher status.

It is important to have a balance of male and female teachers in schools but more important than this is the need for our schools to have good, committed teachers who cater for a variety of different learning styles among boys and girls.

To offer scholarships to male university students on the basis of their gender rather than their academic achievement and commitment to public education would represent a step backwards to a scheme that was abolished in the 1970s.

The Bill reintroduced on November 17 represents part of the Government's attempts to focus education debates and the allocation of resources on boys' education. Examples of this ideology include the "Success for Boys" initiative which will provide, according to Mr Ruddock, "opportunities for boys to benefit from positive male role models" as well as the "Boys Education Lighthouse Schools" project.

What is important to note about this debate is the tendency to overlook or ignore research which shows that the socio-economic status of a student is much more important factor in achieving academic success than the gender of the student.

Academics such as James Cook University Education Professor Nola Alloway has pointed out that a simplistic focus on boys' education ignores the fact that "well-off boys do a lot better than girls from poor backgrounds". Dr Alloway has pointed out that providing resources to a large group of boys from comfortable families could be at the expense of more deserving students, including girls. Dr Alloway in an article in the Queensland Sunday Mail (November 14) is quoted as saying that "there is a danger that a group of girls who underachieve in literacy could be left out altogether".

Siobhan Callan is the Women's Coordinator.