THE Scottish government must do more to tackle “misogynistic” culture in the teaching profession, a trade union leader has said.

Addressing his last speech as EIS president, Allan Crosbie warned that misogyny is leading to not only female teachers being exploited in their early careers but face being driven out of the profession later in life.

Mr Crosbie, who will be succeeded as president of the 50,000-strong union by Adam Sutcliffe at the conference in Aviemore, called for ministers to provide teachers with more than just “warm words” to tackle the growing problem in the classroom and beyond.

And in the run-up to next year’s Holyrood elections, he laid down a challenge to politicians of all stripes to raise their game in tackling the poverty which blights children’s learning.

He told delegates: “Just a few months ago one deputy chief constable described violence against women and girls in the UK as having reached epidemic proportions and constituting a national emergency.

“I do believe the Scottish government and [local government umbrella body] Cosla have recognised that misogyny is a deeply troubling aspect of the violence and aggression against women working in our schools.

“But they need to do more about it.”

Urging politicians at all levels to back teachers as they work to “inoculate” pupils against the dangers of online hatred, he added: “The Scottish government and Cosla need to acknowledge that misogyny isn’t just something ‘out there’ invading schools, peddled by the far right or secreted into boys’ heads by creeps on social media.

“It’s also something that has baked in a structural violence at the heart of our workplaces.

“When an industry or profession, whose workforce is overwhelmingly female, casualises and exploits the labour of women at one end of their career, and then drives them to want to quit early at the other, and when so many women in both situations do actually quit, in what have become record numbers, with severe impacts on their incomes and their pensions, then there’s a word to describe that industry or profession.

“That word is ‘misogynistic’.”

The Scottish government has been approached for comment.