The support group Men in Childcare held its first annual European conference at Edinburgh's City Chambers at the beginning of this month.
Project co-ordinator Colin Chisholm told delegates to the conference that feedback from a recent advertising campaign to recruit men on to the organisation's childcare courses in Edinburgh revealed that men responded positively to advertising aimed specifically at them.
Men on the courses also said they were drawn to them knowing that other childcare students in the classroom would be men.
Mr Chisholm added that the campaign had succeeded in attracting more men into the early years and childcare sector, with 13 men currently working in child and family centres in Edinburgh. When Men in Childcare was set up three and a half years ago, it found only four men in such jobs in the city.
As a result of direct funding from the Scottish Executive, received last September, there are currently 115 men enrolled on Men in Childcare's courses, which are now also running in Dundee, Glasgow and Falkirk.
Delegates from Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Hungary and Poland heard about similar recruitment drives in their own countries, which re- inforced the message that if a targeted campaign is run, men will come forward, but when that campaign stops, so do the new male recruits.
Conference delegates also heard about the success of a recruitment campaign now running in Norway, where men currently make up 8 per cent of the childcare workforce.
Norway was the only country, other than Scotland, represented at the conference that currently has a childcare recruitment campaign targeted directly at men.
Around 6 per cent of childcare staff in Edinburgh are male, and Men in Childcare hopes that now that its training programme has been rolled out to other areas there will be similar progress across Scotland.
Roy Jobson, Edinburgh's director of education and director-designate for children and families, said that encouraging men to choose jobs in the field of childcare and early years is a growing policy in Scotland and throughout the UK.
Mr Jobson said, 'Making sure that we restore the male/female balance is very important across the whole range of pupil services.'
