Monica
05-09-2004, 03:08 PM
The federal government has urged Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward to back a $1 million scholarship package aimed at enticing men into the teaching profession.
Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson announced today that 500 male teaching undergraduates would be entitled to a $2,000 tax-free cash payment after completing the first year of their studies.
But the scholarships are dependent on changes to the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act which are currently being debated in federal parliament, and are fiercely opposed by Ms Goward.
Anticipating opposition to the program, Dr Nelson urged the commissioner to get behind the scheme, stating the need to get more men into primary school classrooms was critical to Australia's future.
"Our sex discrimination commissioner (Pru Goward) has the unusual view that in order to get more men into primary school teaching apparently we have to get more women as well," Dr Nelson told reporters in Perth.
"If we are to apply common sense, then I think it's important that we are able to amend the Sex Discrimination Act in this very narrow and defined way to allow ... government (schools), Catholic schools or independent schools to offer male-only scholarships to attract more men into teaching.
"I would simply ask the sex discrimination commissioner, and others, to look at common sense and most importantly look at the needs of our sons and daughters in primary schools."
Announcing the $1 million commitment at Perth's Swan View High School, Dr Nelson said the proportion of male primary school teachers in Australia had dropped to just over 20 per cent in 2003.
Some 250 schools in NSW alone had been reported as not having a single male teacher, he said.
"It is becoming critically important to our country that we do not produce a generation of young men that feel they are ill prepared for life, let alone for jobs, who have gone through education without having had a significant man in their life," Dr Nelson said.
A vocal critic of possible changes to the Sex Discrimination Act, Ms Goward said in March that other methods should be adopted that did not require discriminatory scholarship schemes.
"The simple fact is that young men are not attracted to teaching because they can earn better money elsewhere. As women's work, it has never been remunerated properly," Ms Goward wrote in The Australian newspaper at the time.
"Front-loading the pay of male teacher students through a scholarship, effectively relieving them of the HECS burden their female counterparts will carry into their professional careers, entrenches this inequity."
- AAP
Source (http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/03/1083436529242.html)
This was an interesting article, but why do they want to pay so much to get men to teach? O_o
Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson announced today that 500 male teaching undergraduates would be entitled to a $2,000 tax-free cash payment after completing the first year of their studies.
But the scholarships are dependent on changes to the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act which are currently being debated in federal parliament, and are fiercely opposed by Ms Goward.
Anticipating opposition to the program, Dr Nelson urged the commissioner to get behind the scheme, stating the need to get more men into primary school classrooms was critical to Australia's future.
"Our sex discrimination commissioner (Pru Goward) has the unusual view that in order to get more men into primary school teaching apparently we have to get more women as well," Dr Nelson told reporters in Perth.
"If we are to apply common sense, then I think it's important that we are able to amend the Sex Discrimination Act in this very narrow and defined way to allow ... government (schools), Catholic schools or independent schools to offer male-only scholarships to attract more men into teaching.
"I would simply ask the sex discrimination commissioner, and others, to look at common sense and most importantly look at the needs of our sons and daughters in primary schools."
Announcing the $1 million commitment at Perth's Swan View High School, Dr Nelson said the proportion of male primary school teachers in Australia had dropped to just over 20 per cent in 2003.
Some 250 schools in NSW alone had been reported as not having a single male teacher, he said.
"It is becoming critically important to our country that we do not produce a generation of young men that feel they are ill prepared for life, let alone for jobs, who have gone through education without having had a significant man in their life," Dr Nelson said.
A vocal critic of possible changes to the Sex Discrimination Act, Ms Goward said in March that other methods should be adopted that did not require discriminatory scholarship schemes.
"The simple fact is that young men are not attracted to teaching because they can earn better money elsewhere. As women's work, it has never been remunerated properly," Ms Goward wrote in The Australian newspaper at the time.
"Front-loading the pay of male teacher students through a scholarship, effectively relieving them of the HECS burden their female counterparts will carry into their professional careers, entrenches this inequity."
- AAP
Source (http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/03/1083436529242.html)
This was an interesting article, but why do they want to pay so much to get men to teach? O_o