300 ACADEMIES BY 2010

The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls, has approved the next stage of development for four new Academies. He announced that he has also agreed to further development for two new Academy proposals in Plymouth, one in East Sussex and another in Hampshire. Ed Balls said today: "I am pleased to announce these new Academy proposals. The Academies programme has a proven track record of raising standards for some of the most disadvantaged young people in the country, and they are popular with parents.

The latest self-reported GCSE results for Academies have again shown improvements that continue to outstrip the national average, and results have almost doubled compared to their predecessor schools.

"These new Academies are also excellent examples of sponsors from different backgrounds working in partnership together to the benefit of all their pupils."

In addition to the new projects Ed Balls also announced that he had approved an additional 15 projects over the summer.

There are now 200 academies open - 67 opened this September. Up to 100 are due to open in 2010 helping us to reach our target of 400 academies. Academy sponsors come from a wide range of backgrounds: Universities, Further Education colleges, high performing state schools (55 universities, 28 FE Colleges and 21 high performing schools are now involved in the programme), independent schools, businesses, philanthropists, the charitable sector and faith communities. The 2008 independent evaluation of Academies by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said: 'Ofsted reinforces our conclusion that, overall, sponsorship contributes significantly to school improvement'.

Academies continue to make rapid improvements. For those Academies with results in 2008 and 2009, the increase in the proportion of pupils achieving at least five GCSEs at A*-C including English and maths is expected to be 5.1 percentage points - it is likely to be above the national average rise and an increase on last year's Academy improvement rate of 4.3 percentage points. In these Academies the average proportion of pupils achieving at least five GCSEs at A*-C including English and maths is 35% - almost double the average final results of the schools they replaced (17.7%).