This will be a decisive year for public service reform, as we accelerate policies to promote choice, diversity and personalised provision in education and health.

Gordon Brown and his new Labour reformers have no intention of losing the initiative on public service modernisation. Significant improvements have been made in the past decade: more good schools and higher school standards; the elimination of long hospital waits; and the extension of patient choice. But the pace of change needs to match rising citizen expectations, so reform and investment must continue to proceed hand in hand.

Hence Alan Johnson's new plans for extending access to GP services in evenings and at weekends, and Ed Balls's decision to accelerate the academies programme to create more good, independently managed secondary schools in areas where standards and effective parental choice are inadequate.

I see 2008 as the year when academies become a mass movement. There are now 83 academies open. Their average test and GCSE results are increasing far faster than the national average and they are three times oversubscribed for each place, even though most of them directly replace seriously underperforming schools. Independent management is vital to their success, generating ambitious school leadership and sponsorship - from within and beyond the existing state system - and with it a vision and ethos focused on rapid success, unafraid to make the changes in staffing, curriculum and pupil expectations necessary to bring this about.

In September we will open nearly 50 new academies - the largest number in any single year so far - and at least 50 a year will be opened in the years that follow towards the existing target of 400. New sponsors include leading universities and successful private schools, who no longer need to provide £2 million in sponsorship to promote an academy. We want the DNA - not their bank balances - of these successful educational institutions to be applied to the creation of more good schools. I am talking with a large number of vice-chancellors, business sponsors and successful school leaders about the creation of new academies, and hope to have most of the 400 identified - with first-rate sponsors - by the end of this year.

Academies represent the most ambitious programme for a generation in establishing new secondary schools, and the first time that school managers have been granted such a degree of independence - within a framework to ensure fair admissions and funding - in the state system.

Other countries, however, are adopting equally radical policies to establish large numbers of new schools on a similar model, so we cannot be complacent in the light of recent international studies of school standards. Sweden now has about 900 independent schools within its state-funded sector. Chicago is midway through a “Renaissance 2010” programme to establish 100 new independently managed schools, many of them direct replacements for failing schools.

On a recent visit to that city I was struck not only by the radicalism of Mayor Richard Daley's decisive break with past educational failure, but also its centrality to his plans for the city's future. Ending the flight out of the city to the suburbs and beyond by aspirational families with children is a key priority. It is the same for us, and across much of inner London there are encouraging signs of success.

Chicago is pioneering and expanding programmes to attract more talented graduates into teaching - as we are too. Scaling up Teach First, and establishing a new Future Leaders programme to attract successful mid-career switchers into teaching, are also priorities for 2008. Teach First, another independently managed organisation reforming state education, recruits top-performing new graduates from leading universities into teaching in city schools on a special two-year programme with dedicated training and supervision. Over time I would like this to be one of the main entry routes into the teaching profession, making it the career of choice for a large proportion of our best graduates at least for a few years after university.

Also important in 2008 is an extension of our policies to promote the education of gifted and talented pupils within state schools and academies. Parents of more able children need to be assured that all-ability schools really will develop the talents of their children to the full - on a par with grammar and private schools. Hence last week's announcement that school performance tables will identify the proportion of the highest achievers in national tests for 14-year-olds. This will assist more intensive engagement by universities in the work of state secondary schools, including summer schools and outreach programmes for gifted and talented students.

Some on the Left claim there is a tension between equality and meritocracy in our education policy.

I reject this view. Compared with more successful European systems, England in the late 20th century had far too little of both equality and meritocracy. We had too many seriously underperforming schools, particularly in poorer areas, while able pupils in even the best all-ability state schools tended to do less well than their counterparts in grammar and private schools, holding back social mobility. Putting this right is a central objective of new Labour - and a reason for accelerating reform.

Lord Adonis is Minister for Schools

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