Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to attract men into the teaching profession.

We value diversity in the workforce but want the best people in the classroom, regardless of their gender. Evidence shows that the quality of teaching is the single most important factor in determining how well pupils achieve. Our support ‎for recruitment to initial teacher training (ITT) is mainly aimed at the secondary phase. We offer generous financial incentives including bursaries and scholarships worth up to £30,000 to attract the best graduates into the profession. We have also given schools the freedom to recruit and train their own teachers.

There have been 8,604 male entrants to postgraduate ITT in 2016/17 (32 per cent of the total). The proportion of entrants to secondary postgraduate ITT in 2016/17 that are male is 40 per cent, an increase of three percentage points since 2012/13. The proportion of primary entrants to postgraduate ITT in 2016/17 that are male is 20 per cent, a decrease of three percentage points since 2012/13.