[laughs]

And, uh, and Harry was talking about how he got into, into teaching later in life, and that really aligns actually with the research, where a lot of men are actually going into teaching as that kind of career pivot.

They've perhaps been in a, like, a trade or a more kind of traditional masculine kind of occupation, and, and they're looking to, you know, kind of find those jobs where they can contribute to society, that has a bit more of a sense of kind of moral, moral service.

So that, that kind of really stands out about how we might be able to shift these sorts of ideas about, you know, what, what is valuable about teaching for men and also what they offer.

But I think the idea that somehow m- men are superior at teaching maths or, or being firm, I think that reinforces a lot of our gendered stereotypes, and I think we need to be really cautious there.

And we also need to underline that, that women t- are doing a great job as teachers, and this debate, it, we need to be careful that we don't dismiss the quality work that our, uh, women teachers are, are, are doing, and, and also that women can also teach masculine values as well-

All the care system, nursing, midwifery, childcare, will always be more female prominent as long as the salary doesn't reflect the hard wors- work it asks." Nick, how do we make schools a place where men wanna work?

This is the big question, and I think that that comment is spot on.

Nick, what do you think is behind this drop?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a really kind of tricky social, cultural story that's, that's, that's driving this.

Um, I, I think one of the main drivers of this is really our, our ideas about masculinity, and we still have that very close coding of primary school teaching as, as women's work, that it's, it's closely aligned with those kind of caring roles and caring norms, and that's a really big part of this.

And when we look at the international data, there is some variation, but, uh, often it is still around this kind of mark.

And in fact, Australia is actually ahead of, uh, in terms of their participation, uh, from men in primary school compared to, uh, a lot of countries in Europe, for example.

But there are outliers, for example, like D- uh, Denmark has high levels.

They, they sit above 30%.

All the care system, nursing, midwifery, childcare, will always be more female prominent as long as the salary doesn't reflect the hard wors- work it asks." Nick, how do we make schools a place where men wanna work?