When the GCSE results are released today there will be the usual “dumbing down” claims about the number gaining A and A* grades and taking vocational subjects. It is of a piece with those criticising Team GB's “inadequate” Olympic success because state schools should be providing more Olympians. In the warped words of one commentator this week, “the whole concept of the Olympics is anathema to the rulers of British state education because elitism of any kind is frowned upon”.

This is pure drivel. As Education Minister in a government that funds at record levels elite sports, elite universities, elite music and drama, and gifted and talented programmes in state schools, I am an unabashed elitist. I have no problem in learning from the success of the best schools, in the way that Alice Thomson called for in The Times yesterday. The increasingly successful academies programme seeks to inject the DNA of leading private and state schools - notably their ethos of individual achievement - into the creation of new schools where standards at present are low and opportunity poor.

But a different sort of elitism lurks behind much of this carping. It is the class-based elitism that instinctively wants to ration success and cap the aspirations of the less advantaged. The underlying premise is that there is a fixed pool of talent in society.

So every August we are told that increased success rates demonstrate declining standards in state schools (increased success in private schools, by contrast, is usually put down to hard work and good teaching).

I reject this ration-book view of talent and opportunity. It was a bad recipe for the 20th century and is a disastrous one for the 21st. Successful societies flourish above all else by mobilising talent and educational potential. There is no genetic or moral reason why the whole of society should not succeed to the degree that the children of the professional classes do today, virtually all getting five or more good GCSEs and staying on in education beyond 16.

On the basis of rigorous standards, we should strongly welcome annual increases in pass rates. We should not bemoan the 19.5 per cent getting A* and A grades at GCSE (up from 14 per cent in 1997), and the 46 per cent getting five or more good GCSEs including in English and maths (up from 36 per cent in 1997), but ask how we rapidly increase these proportions higher still. Every 16-year-old without incapacitating special needs should get five or more good GCSEs including English, maths and (where appropriate) vocational equivalents; the challenge is to improve schools and raise social aspiration to bring this about. This means pushing forward with three critical school reform strands, along with the real-terms doubling of spending in the past decade.

First, the teaching profession needs to recruit more of the brightest and best. No school can be better than its teachers. Every secondary school needs top-class graduates in all the main disciplines. Partly this is down to pay: the 20 per cent real-terms increase in teachers' pay since 1997, and extra incentives for maths graduates and other scarce disciplines, have boosted recruitment. But we must expand opportunities for suitable graduates to embark on teaching without entry barriers.

This is why we have backed the business-led Teach First scheme, enabling graduates with top degrees to teach for two years in city secondary schools after a summer training programme, and the Graduate Teacher Programme, which targets mid-career switchers. Last month we doubled Teach First recruitment to 850 graduates a year. In five years it has become four times oversubscribed, both by graduates and by lower-attaining London schools clamouring for its teachers. If it can recruit 850, why not 8,500 - with teaching, for at least a short stint, becoming public service for all top graduates with the right qualities?

Secondly, every school needs strong leadership, ethos and governance. This is why we created the National College for School Leadership to train head teachers, and pioneered specialist schools, trust schools and academies - all with a distinctive ethos and the last two with independent partners in their governance besides local authorities. We want more trust schools and academies to increase choice and to ensure that every secondary school levels up, not down, including special provision for the most able students to fulfil their potential, whether in academic pursuits, sport or the arts.

Thirdly, we need a modern curriculum that provides high-quality vocational qualifications beyond 14. For too long the curriculum beyond the age of 14 has been restricted to academic subjects; and too many students with different aptitudes and interests have left - usually at 16 - with few, if any, qualifications. This has to change, so we are introducing a wider range of vocational diplomas and from 2015 raising the education and training participation age to 18.

In Beijing world records are being broken in quick succession with previously unattainable standards becoming the norm. Success at school, too, is becoming the norm, not the exception - and the change can't come fast enough.

The author is the Schools Minister

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