The initiative will target three priorities: promoting better equity in access, improving the quality of learning and promoting global citizenship.

UNESCO: EDUCATION FIRST

When an improvement program does result in some improvement, but leadership perceives the initiative to be an outright failure an important learning opportunity gets missed.

FORBES: Connect

Mr Coles said that Paddington Academy in London and William Hulme Grammar School in Manchester, also run by United Learning, would share leadership of the initiative to provide initial teacher training for 50 students from September this year and some 200 trainee teachers the following year.

BBC: Private schools to train state school teachers

Fiona Banks, head of learning at Globe Education at Shakespeare s Globe, in Southwark, London, said the initiative would help "students engage with Shakespeare's plays - as plays - to be experienced practically and through performance".

BBC: Shakespeare 'for five-year-olds'