New figures from the General Teaching Council for Wales (GTCW) have confirmed that the proportion of female secondary school head teachers in Wales has doubled in eight years.

Some 31.7 per cent of heads are female at present, up from 16.5 per cent in 2004. This year has, in fact, witnessed the biggest annual jump since records began, the GTCW confirmed.

Gareth Jones, ASCL Cymru's secretary, observed that the trend is a reflection of major changes in gender balance in middle management over recent years.

"In the early 1990s," he explained, "virtually all middle leadership positions were occupied by men but that has changed significantly and any barriers which existed at that stage are gone."

Despite this, Dr Philip Dixon, director of the ATL education union in Wales, said that more work needs to be done to address the gender imbalance at management level.

"It is still not acceptable that, while around two-thirds of the workforce in secondary schools are women, just under one-third of heads are female," he commented.