High-pitched female voices in the classroom damage boys’ learning, an education expert has said.

Celia Lashlie, an education advisor said female teachers should pipe down and give boys time to think rather than talking incessantly during lessons.

Boys respond better to non-verbal communication such as raised eyebrows, but when female teachers do speak to them they should do so in lower tones, said Ms Lashlie, who investigated male learning in New Zealand.

Ms Lashlie advised teachers, “Don’t speak so much – just shut up,” and said female teachers gave her earache.

“I’ve been in classes with young female teachers and by the end of the session my ears hurt,” she told the Times Educational Supplement.

Ms Lashlie also called for the defeminisation of the teaching profession which is dominated by women and argued that fathers should take a greater role in the education of their children. Beverly Hughes, the children’s minister, recently urged head teachers to engage with fathers who tend to shy away from schools because they consider them “women-centred places”.

The lack of male role models in schools is often cited as a cause of behaviour problems in schools. Britain has a national shortage of male teachers who account for just 12 per cent of primary school staff and 40 per cent at secondary level.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the teaching union NASUWT, denounced Ms Lashlie’s conclusions as “a load of clap-trap.”

“It is disappointing that a woman has felt the need to pander to the views of a tiny group of men who present themselves as the oppressed minority,” she said.

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