Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress is being made to attract more male recruits to teaching, especially in primary schools.

We value diversity in the workforce and want to attract high quality teachers from both sexes. Recent figures show that, while 15% of full-time equivalent teachers in publicly- funded primary schools in England are male, the proportion of men starting primary initial teacher training programmes in 2014/15 is 21%, the highest proportion since comparable records were first maintained in 2008/09.