The Uneducated PT Podcast - Ep 148 - Irish Teacher Explains The Reason Boys Are Falling Behind.

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

In this episode, we sit down with Chris McManus, an experienced teacher who has worked in some of the most disadvantaged schools across the UK and Ireland.Drawing on years of frontline experience, Chris shares powerful insights into the realities facing students and educators today.We explore why the current school system may be falling short particularly for boys and discuss the structural, cultural, and societal factors that are contributing to this growing challenge. From classroom dynamics to broader policy issues, this conversation sheds light on what’s really happening behind the scenes.This is an honest, thought-provoking discussion about education, inequality, and what needs to change to better support the next generation.

Chris, can you start by telling the listeners a little bit about your background and then the connection between your profession and then mental health for teenage boys that you're going to be speaking at this event? In 10 minutes, Carl, past and present. Yes, please. Holy God, right. I'll keep it short. Chris McManus from Fasaro. So lovely, beautiful, working class, council estate, the biggest in Ireland in the 80s and 90s. I grew up there, very proud of it. Went to an all-boys primary school, very academic, but also very sporty. So I didn't get picked on as a boy in the 80s and 90s because I was sporty as well. Then went to a secondary school with girls

which was the disaster of me. He became very bold, couldn't be regulated in class. Several teachers from first to six years said, you put your head down in the back of the classroom, I won't teach you. So I ended up failing to leaving search. I got an A in English and pretty much failed everything else. I was working on building sites, working on Tescoes,

knew I needed to get back to where I wanted to be with the push of the mammy. and the daddy. So went back to school a few years after, repeat the leaving certs. Once I got into college, completely different. I could regulate myself. Didn't need someone to do it for me in a classroom. I was an independent learner. Flew it. Finished top of the class and everything for four years. Went to Matterdown Trinity College. Became a teacher. Met the beautiful Mrs. Sarah, who you know, 22 years, still not married. Absolute legend. We travelled the world three years. Then went to England because couldn't get a job

in education in Ireland at the time due to the crash quickly became a deputy principal in England in a rough school, 2,000 kids bottom 10% oil for disadvantage of the whole of England. Cut me teat, metal detectors for knives and guns, came back to

Ireland, luckily, that's what we wanted, two lovely, beautiful boys Killian and Cohn, both Irish names. The English start calling them Sillian and so on, so he said, no, that's it. Get out of England, back to Ireland. Got a job teaching. in Edmund Royce, probably something named a school,

in Castle Knox-Las Blanchardstown, and I'm assistant principal and yearhead there now. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack there. I suppose I wanted to start with, let's maybe go back to school and, you know, for boys trying to self-regulate and struggling in the education system. Like, is there anything from, obviously,

your time in school and then what you see as a teacher now that could be done in regards to helping boys actually finish school, go on to college and, you know, becoming financially successful and all the things that probably improve their mental health because, you know, they're not struggling in society. Yeah, and there's loads to unpacking that question as well, mate. Look, if you look at all the data and the figures,

and we'll do that on the night, 8th of February, everything is leaning towards boys struggling more and more. And that's inside the classroom but also outside of the classroom. So whereas before it used to be, not that teachers were unskilled or weren't aware, But back then it was a lot like you sit in the corner, it's okay. Now there's lots of support mechanisms, there's lots of things in place within a school to regulate any individual child, whether it's a boy or a girl, but particularly a boy.

You need skill, you need support mechanisms in place. You need funding though. But the biggest worry for me is what's coming from outside of the school into the school. Because boys in particular, young boys, teenagers, pre-teenagers, they're now so immersed in the modern world that we live that they're locking themselves in the room. So they're now missing out on social skills that when you couldn't regulate, you still were able to bounce off your characteristics.

So you have a life skill in being able to speak to people, whether it's being a messer or being able to be empathetic and compassionate. Now they're losing those skills. So they're coming into the classroom without the social skills we used to have and now they still don't have the skills to regulate in the class. So it's twofold now, which is making it harder and harder. There are mechanisms. No, the young people,

people, build the rapport, understand them, let them understand you. The biggest thing for me, gain respect by giving respect. That's what I do as an educator. It's what I do as a person. And that's how you break down the barriers. Working in any rough school in Ireland or England or indeed any not as rough school, break down the barrier by treating the young person as a human. If you can do that, that's the start of a win.

That's such a good point about even coming in and having, not learn any kind of social skills, not being able to talk people, and talking to people out on the road or the shopkeeper or whatever it is, all that builds resilience as a child as well. 100%. Resilience is the key word. And to the point that my own, my eldest, Killian, he's nine years old now, I've been a nerd as a teacher.

I used him as a guinea pig in England. In an assembly front of 2,000 kids, in a disadvantaged area, I told them, it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter where you're from. If you build resilience, you can be anything. And how I used my two and a half year old at the time, I taught him a word acquiesce, which means to give in.

And what I did with him, a little social experiment, I tiggled him, two and a half years age, and I tiggled him and said, I'm not going to stop because you don't like tigling, until you learn the word acquiesce, which means to give in, form of torture, but it was parental and it was learning. He very quickly, within a few seconds,

realized he's not going to stop tigling until I say, I acquiesce, I give in. I use that and brought it into an assembly in front of 2,000 kids, but I flipped it with the 2,000 kids and said it's not about giving in, it's about being resilient. It's okay to admit the fee. It's okay to have a challenge.

It's actually good to have a challenge and embrace it. It's probably even better to fail it, to learn from the failure. Resilience is the key. If you don't have the resilience, whether it's in the classroom, in the corridor, in the court chart,

in society. As a young boy in particular, if you don't have that resilience to build yourself, it's a question of how are you going to get to the next step? How are you going to be able to regulate yourself in the classroom? how are you going to have that conversation with someone that you probably don't want to have the conversation with?

How are you going to be the success that you want to be? Whether it's financially stable or whether it's just happy. Resilience, for me, it's the key word. If you have that resilience, if you build that resilience, and again, there's lots of ways of doing it. If you build that resilience, you build a person.

And that's allowing the person to be their best of. You spoke about when you went into a mixed skill and obviously struggled to pay attention in school. Do you think there's an argument to let's say have boys start later in school than girls because we almost develop a little bit later? Huge. And there's research and statistics if you look across the world in education and obviously there's research and statistics to prove or disprove anything. But I would say definitely there's lots there's lots of needs to change in the education system without getting in my soapbox. There's lots of things that we need to look at

but the first, the most important thing we need to look at, which is what education should be. It should be student centric for every single child. We need to look at when we're bringing them into school, at what age? What stage are we starting to stop just nurturing and start developing them? And for boys, they are developing later. They are, and that's clinically in research proven all across the world, in every continent, in every demographic. So a huge argument that boys start later, or indeed, they start in a different environment.

Whether it's in a mixed school or a one-gender school, their school, if you build an environment that's more suitable for them, you can build those resilient skills, those social skills, you can help them mature and quicker than if you just throw them into the bear pit at the beginning. Because once you throw them in, then it's a free-for-all. Yeah, I know from myself when I was younger, and I'm sure it's the same with a lot of boys. It's that, you know, I struggled with the kind of environment of reading and writing and sitting down. Now, you know, I'm quite active.

If you put a podcast in my ears and let me walk, I can absorb information very easily. But in our school, we didn't even have P. after third year, it was, you know, classroom, eight hours a day. And again, I was probably similar as I couldn't self-regulate. Is there an argument to say that we shouldn't be teaching boys and girls? Obviously, there will be crossover. But in terms of, you know, large group data,

should we be, you know, teaching them the same way if we learn differently? We shouldn't, and it's not just the distinction between the boy and the girl, it's the distinction between every single demographic. Because every learner learns in two or three ways. There's audio, there's visual, and there's kinesthetic. And every single learner in the world has two ways that are tapped into. But we should be teaching every single learner, the three ways to learn. And what we don't do is that.

And in the case of boys, they mature later. We have all the research to prove it. and they struggle to engage more. If you look at, again, autism, ADHD, without even going down that route, someone who's riddled with ADHD and on the spectrum, boys tend to have larger difficulties within that spectrum. If you then go to PDA,

because they're not supported and nurtured from a young age, that brings out PDA, sorry, that's defiance disorder. It's ODD in Ireland currently, but it's changing currently to PDA, not public display of affection, which I'm sure I'll show you later. But all the research suggests that hits boys more. And that's because how they grow up.

And when they grow up within a school and they don't get that environment from the beginning, all it does is exacerbate it. And that's the problem that we're stemming. So the argument, boys and girls separated, taught differently in the same. Every individual should be taught differently to cater for their needs.

And it doesn't happen. And as that, I suppose it's also, you touched on funding at the very start of this conversation. it's probably very difficult to teach everyone individually in different ways when you have masses coming through the doors and you need the create a system where everyone gets a bit of education and moves on. And that's the case of you have to tap into everyone's needs. Funding is a huge issue, not just in education and everything in our country.

And again, I won't get on the soapbox about politics, although sometimes I like to. But without the funding, which we know we don't have enough of, we're not allowed create the support mechanisms within the school environment. Instead of having ideally 20 kids in a class, we have 30 legally, but if you go to most schools around this country,

there's classrooms where there's more than 30 in some of them. At one stage in England, I know it's the UK, but at one stage I was teaching 64 students in an English GCSE class five days a week in one of the roughest areas in England because of a lack of funding in that country. That's not the same in Ireland, but that's not to say it's not different.

And again, if you don't have the support mechanisms, which the government need to invest in, then how are you supposed to create the future leaders? That's not just an education. If you look in youth work, look at all the cuts that are happening. My own parents, my mommy and daddy have been involved in it for 40, 50 years. That's where I first got influenced from him in Fasaro. And it's been cut to the point now that the kids are being left to fend for themselves. The adults and the parents don't have the support mechanisms to support their own children.

And if they're not supporting the individual, that leads to a group. And then if you have a group that's not getting the support, then they come into the classroom, which is underfunded. And now all of a sudden you have schools all across the country who are not allowing their kids to tap into the potential. And Ireland is one of the biggest diaspora's in the world for pushing people to different countries. We built America, we built Canada, all of these old tropes.

We have one of the most educated skill workforces in Ireland since the Celtic Tiger in the 90s. But most people, like me, you at a time, well, we left the country, not known if we're going to come back. But now we're worried about are we now giving the kids enough opportunity so that they can actually leave if they want to, and if we're not giving them enough, are they going to be skilled and knowledgeable enough not just to remain in our country, but to provide opportunity for them, which in turn then supports the country?

Last question I wanted to ask you. And it's something that I was, I remember I was looking at data from America. I don't know what the data would be in Ireland, but you talked about, you know, boys from disadvantaged areas, a lot of them probably come from homes, you know, that might be fatherless. Is there an argument to say that there needs to be more male teachers in schools? And from your own experience, have you noticed that there's, you know, is it a female dominant industry?

And could that be something that we could look at in regards to, obviously, male figures for young boys? 100%. And it is, but again, there's two separate spheres within it. Divorce is on the up, single parents is on the up for lots of different reasons. Lots of children are grown up without a dad. Now, in terms of population of teachers, females still dominate in the gender roles, particularly in primary schools. And the reason I'm mentioning that, even though I'm secondary-based, because we have got so

many female teachers in primary school, these kids that have no father figure from a young age now, whereas in the 90s when divorce was first being allowed in our Catholic dominated country back then, the kids were getting to secondary school before having no father figure. Now it's from primary school. So again, those issues are now stemming from when they're children, from when they're babies. Where they're essentially trying to learn resilience like we spoke about. And without that father figure, not to say, mammy's, my mammy was the one that push me as well as my dad. But from a younger age, not having a father figure means it's harder.

Now, in secondary school, the balance is closer. It's still more female than male. But you still see all of those issues. And when it comes to the lack of a father figure, especially with, as I said earlier, looping it back, there's more kids than ever now in our country, not actually getting onto a football pitch, not engaging in a community sport.

And instead, they're in their room, on their computer, on a phone, if they're allowed to have a phone. So these boys that don't have a father figure in a school necessarily as a teacher or a role model, they don't have a coach who should be coaching them as well. So they're losing the community, they're losing the father figure, they're losing their social skills and all of it's been replaced, technology, what they're seeing on their phone, the big bad world that we live in currently, and that's stemming mental health issues, that's increasing

the lack of resilience, that's creating more challenges but they're never able to, sadly, face them.