A teacher is appearing on Love Island. 

Now, I’ve never actually watched an episode myself, but when you’re surrounded by teenagers, this kind of news is pretty difficult to miss. 

A quick scroll on Instagram confirms everything I’d suspected about PE teacher Hugo Hammond, based on my limited knowledge of the show: there, topless, tanned and turning heads, is a single male PE teacher who is definitely ready to mingle. 

Far from being thrilled to see the profession represented, though, it all felt - as the islanders would say - muggy. 

Going through my mind were the dozens of events I’ve turned down for fear of unknowingly ending up on social media or being called into the headteacher’s office first thing on the following Monday: being seen at a festival in shorts and drinking warm beer or going for a Prosecco with my girlfriends in town could easily become the kind of Snapchat fodder that would somehow suggest that I have brought the profession into disrepute and am wildly incapable of teaching. 

Although uncomfortable to acknowledge, there is a different set of expectations for female teachers.

Love Island teacher: A different set of expectations for female teachers

We are expected to be maternal figures who are - and have only ever been - totally dedicated to caring for other people’s children, sacrificing our own lives along the way. 

This double standard is not a new experience, but one that has been felt by generations of female teachers. In the 19th and into the 20th century, teaching was a man’s game. It was legally enforced that only unmarried women could become teachers as “The duty of a married woman [was] primarily to look after her domestic concerns and it [was] impossible for her to do so and to effectively and satisfactorily act as a teacher at the same time.” 

Post-war, female teachers were encouraged to not take teaching jobs (despite shortages), so as to avoid embarrassing their unemployed husbands. Even then, female teachers were only paid five-sixths of their male counterparts’ earnings; it wasn’t until 1955 that equal pay was agreed and that took five long years to happen. 

Of course, it would be easy to suggest that I’m being overdramatic, or that these issues are long gone, but social media has only served to make the chasm between male and female teachers more apparent.  

Take Gemma Laird. Five years ago, Gemma was working as a teaching assistant. Prior to her starting her job in a school, she was a lingerie model. A parent trawled through Facebook, found some photos, reported them, and Gemma was sacked. 

In the same week, engineering lecturer Pietro Boselli hit the headlines. Like Gemma, Boselli was searched online and discovered to have been a model. He’s wearing significantly less than Gemma in the photos, but what was his punishment? A contract with Armani. 

‘I bet his lessons are really fun’

It happens closer to home too: a London-based teacher recently told me how a Year 7 student trawled through her family’s social media in order to find her very private and well-hidden Instagram page.

He hacked into it, then shared private pictures from a photoshoot with the entire school. This led to her being called into an SLT meeting in which she was told she should take more care, and she almost lost her job. 

Compare this with Hammond though: his page openly shows him both teaching and wearing speedos. This would almost definitely earn him a high five in the corridor and see him labelled as a “lad” or a “legend” who has “banter”. 

All over the country, viewers this summer will be saying, “I bet his lessons are really fun,” and “I bet his students love him,” without stopping to consider the double standard they would reinforce should their child’s female teacher appear in the same manner. 

I hope that in the future people will be able to accept that a female teacher can maintain her work life and her domestic life, as publicly or privately as she would like, without it ruining her reputation. But until that day comes, it’s going to be long-distance lunches and front-room festivals for me. 

Lauran Hampshire-Dell is a teacher and tutor