The Minister of Education has taken a second look at gender equality in public schools and will be hiring male teachers over female teachers in coming years.

Education Minister Terry Lister recently attended a conference of the Commonwealth Education Ministers of the Caribbean and Canadian Region in the Bahamas and discovered that one of the six things governments across the Commonwealth are supposed to be doing to ?fix education? is addressing gender equality.

But Mr. Lister said participating countries soon realised that they did not have a problem with girls in education, but with boys.

?The girls in every one of these countries are flourishing and winning every prize, while the boys are dropping out,? Mr. Lister said.

The challenge facing Bermuda ? a lack of male role models in the classroom ? is not unique.

?For us to fix this we have to be selective in hiring,? Mr. Lister said. ?We have to try real hard to bring in male teachers from overseas over female teachers and this has to be a purposeful thing.?

He said if foreign teachers must be brought to Bermuda, it makes sense to bring in male teachers in the hopes they will have an impact on young males in Bermuda.

Mr. Lister said his Ministry is working on ?producing? male teachers in Bermuda, but until that happens, the Ministry has no choice but to hire from overseas.

Asked about new teachers starting this year, Mr. Lister said there has always been a turnover of schoolteachers and this year is no exception.

A variety of new teachers will be starting at schools this year, including a few young Bermudians just starting their careers.

?We have very few teachers coming in from the UK, two or three at the most,? he said.

Most of the overseas teachers hired this year came from the US and Caribbean.

?We decided to spread it around and get ads out to the States early,? Mr. Lister said.

?What we found last year, in the months of June and July, was that there were school boards on the East Coast, who for financial reasons, were just firing teachers ? but did not tell them until the end of the school year and we didn?t know until it was too late.?

Knowing that this could happen again, the Department of Education advertised early in order to give Bermuda the opportunity to select the best available teachers.