There are now 3,000 academies — and many of them are passionately engaged in improving underperforming schools by taking them under their wing — "sponsoring" them. Some have achieved amazing transformations.

Greenwood Dale sponsors the Nottingham Girls' Academy, which has around double the average number of pupils on free school meals. In its first year as an academy, the percentage of pupils achieving five good GCSEs, including English and maths, has jumped from 37 per cent in 2011 to 56 per cent in 2012. 

Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School in Rochester, a grammar school and one of the first National Teaching Schools, became an academy and founded the Williamson Trust in April 2011. The Trust now has four academies, including one which, having being in special measures, is now judged good by Ofsted and has seen results double since 2009.  The secret of academies' success is really no secret at all — it's great teaching and high expectations.

Many of those making the biggest difference in academies and free schools are alumni of Teach First or members of its sister organisations Teaching Leaders and Future Leaders. All three are charities designed to recruit outstanding young people who are academically distinguished and who have also demonstrated real leadership ability into classrooms in our most challenging communities. They explicitly bypass the old teacher recruitment routes and thus challenge the monopoly of the old teacher training colleges.

The evidence so far indicates that they are making a dramatic — and welcome — difference to every school in which they operate. And these charities — by explicitly targeting students with the best degrees from top universities — have helped change the profile of teaching overall by leading a new generation of academically accomplished undergraduates into the profession. That's why the coalition government has increased their funding — to allow Teach First to quadruple in size and encourage Teaching Leaders and Future Leaders to work in more schools. And we've sought to apply those lessons more widely.

We've explicitly set out to recruit more academically inspiring young people by awarding scholarships to students with top degrees from good universities in subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing.

We've deliberately ensured they can train in the best environment to learn about classroom management, discipline and effective teaching: schools. We've given the best heads the chance to recruit trainee teachers direct — so they can bypass the teacher training colleges and guarantee an attractive start for any idealistic graduate. Already the evidence from Ofsted suggests that teacher training in schools is superior to the courses offered by the old colleges.