Boys will continue to lag behind girls at school unless more male teachers are recruited, it is claimed.

Male charity campaigners say that more “positive action” is needed from local authorities to address the shortage of male teachers in primary schools.

The call comes as figures released by the Realmanswork group show that 15.1% of teachers in primary and nursery schools in Brighton and Hove are male. In East and West Sussex, the number of male primary and nursery teachers was marginally above the national average of 12.7%.

The Realmanswork group, which describes itself as a community for men working in female-dominated industries, said the number of male teachers was increasing in Brighton and Hove and praised the work of A Few Good Men and The Men’s Network.

A Few Good Men held meetings last year where prospective male teachers met with current teachers for advice and support. A number of projects to increase the involvement of fathers in schools are being run in the city, including at St Bartholomew’s, Whitehawk Primary and Hertford Juniors, where a fathers’ choir performed to 200 children and parents.

Kuen-Wah Cheung, a founder of A Few Good Men and employee at the Honeycroft Centre in Hove, said it was likely boys would continue to lag behind without more male teachers.

He said: “Male and female teachers have different skill sets and children really need to experience both. I work in a nursery and the environment I work in is a gendered culture which is very much female and this makes it very difficult to get into nurseries.”

Glen Poole, community and volunteer sector forum representative for men and boys, said the public sector has an obligation that its workforce reflects the diversity of thecommunity it serves, and that it fails to do that in education.

He said an earlier investigation had revealed that less than 10% of staff who worked with children at risk of isolation in the city’s schools are male, compared to 80% of the children they were working with.

He said: “If there is a shortage of LGBT, black people or women in another profession, then there is positive action to address that balance.

“To change the balance of primary school teachers will take quite a few generations but schools can do more to get fathers involved.

“The elephant in the room needs to be acknowledged by authorities.”

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman said that teachers were hired by individual school bodies and candidates were chosen on ability rather than gender.