Out with the old and in with the new: the king is dead; long live the queen! The appointment of Amanda Spielman as the new Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector is a wise and sensible choice. She is a strong and credible leader, and not one given to petulant fits of pique or temper tantrums whenever the mood so takes (which for the old king was seemingly whenever insufficient strokes were given to his fading plumage). Moreover though, she is a she.

It is a sad indictment when, in a sector in which females dominate so dramatically at all other levels, you can count on one hand the number of truly senior roles occupied by women.

We have our Rachels, our Lucys, our Sallys, our Alisons and our Beckys. But not many more than that who are really in positions of sufficient influence and power.

Because when you sit round that table as I do, what is striking is the sea of white men in grey suits. Or, more accurately, grey men in grey suits. (This becomes all the more depressing when you consider that we have a female secretary of state who is also minister for women.)

And, of course, it is not just a phenomenon that resides at CEO level. In these hallowed pages, we read that even though women make up nearly two-thirds of teaching staff in secondary schools, only 38 per cent of heads are women (see pages 20-21).

How can this be? Are we honestly saying that we’re happy for women to take charge in the classroom, just not of a whole school? Is it just me, or is the profession silently screaming at us: “Women: know your limits!”?

And it’s not as though men have covered themselves in glory in these most coveted of positions. Recently, two more edu-scandals have been dragged into the glare of the sunlight; one related to a head awarding contracts worth £1 million to his partner. The other (reported in last Sunday’s Observer) was again linked to financial arrangements, with mandatory outsourcing contracts for academies in a trust awarded to a company that sits behind the trust.

The fact is that despite the numbers of women in teaching, this is still a man’s world. We need more senior women to be role models to others coming through the system. We need our version of the Merkels, the Mays and the Maggies of politics. But - and here’s the crucial bit - we need more than just a smattering of stars.

What we need is structural change. And this is where organisations like Teach First need to step up. In its latest cohort of graduate recruits, more than two-thirds were women.

And it’s here where the work needs to start. Teach First has a shockingly high attrition rate. Some would argue that this is quite deliberately built into its funding model.

But perhaps instead of chasing corporate donations in exchange for those companies having first dibs on their bright (but now jaded) graduates when they decide to leave after two years of teaching (newsflash: teaching is tough! Who knew?), Teach First might try a different approach. Maybe if it focused on mentoring and coaching for its best and brightest female graduates, we might start to see the sort of change that is so badly needed.

But it’s not just Teach First that needs to pull its socks up; the same applies to the full span of the “quangoracy” that claims to support talent development in the profession. Future Leaders is yet another case in point. Its Executive Educators programme has very few female coaches.

But others, too, need to ask whether they are doing enough to support female leaders - Teaching Leaders, the National College and the regional schools commissioners could all play an important structural role.

This is not about quotas or targets, or some other type of ghastly positive-discrimination ruse. It is about women role-modelling to other women. It is about women going for those leadership roles. It is about women taking what should be theirs. The king is indeed dead: so now let’s see a few more queens come to life.

The Secret CEO is the chief executive of a multi-academy trust somewhere in England