Offering scholarships to lure more men into teaching could help end the man drought in primary schools, according to an education academic.

Australian Catholic University school of education head Matthew Zbaracki said universities and State governments should award dedicated teaching scholarships to encourage more men into the profession. He said he was delivering a lecture to first-year education students a few months ago when he realised not one of the students in the lecture theatre was male.

“There needs to be a major drawcard for males to pursue this career path, and perhaps a free education is just such an enticement,” he said.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed that for almost three decades as few as one in five Australian primary school teachers has been male.

Last year, just 17 per cent of WA primary school teachers were men, compared with 22 per cent in South Australia and 21 per cent in Victoria.

Dr Zbaracki said scholarships were a viable option to promote teaching careers to men, even though it could breach sex discrimination laws.

“If we don’t offer some sort of incentive, then the issue is going to continue to grow,” he said.

Dr Zbaracki said men were reluctant to go into primary school teaching because of low salaries, a lack of respect for the profession and the perception it was a woman’s job.

Research showed it was important for boys and girls to have male role models. “All students, not just boys, should have the opportunity to interact with male teachers,” he said.

St Mark’s Anglican Community School head of junior school Brad Gill said he was lucky to inherit a school where nearly one-third of staff were men.

“We’re really trying to build a microcosm of what people would find in the real world, and clearly there are men in that,” he said.

“We want an environment with multiple perspectives.”

The WA Education Department started a recruitment drive in 2015 to get more men into primary schools.