Yet many of us who have worked in the education service have grown up believing that our education system trails behind those in France, Germany and elsewhere. Reports from Victorian times onwards have drawn attention to our comparative failings.

So deep had the message been drilled into our psyche by the 1990s, that we came to believe it would always be true. When, in the mid-1990s as a naive professor I used to argue at conferences that we could have a world-class education service if we chose, there were some who responded by listing the barriers and others who contested the ambition altogether.

Against this background, the OECD-PISA study published this week and based on the performance of 15-year-olds in 32 countries, comes as a shock to us all. The most sophisticated and reliable set of international comparisons ever undertaken has suddenly revealed that we are stars. In literacy we are seventh in the world and only significantly behind Finland and Canada. In “mathematical literacy” we are eighth, and only significantly behind Korea and Japan and in “scientific literacy” we are fourth, only significantly behind Korea. These results put us ahead of the United States, France and Germany. In Germany they are coming to terms with being 26th, 24th and 25th respectively in literacy, maths and science.

A number of people to whom I’ve described these results react with disbelief. So ingrained is our inferiority complex, they ask whether the study is robust. The answer is “yes”. What is more, there are very good reasons for our new status.

One is that successive governments have pursued a broadly consistent set of reforms. The establishment of clear national standards and effective accountability from the late 1980s, was matched in the late 1990s by a focus on school improvement, best practice, professional development for teachers and increasing equity. (The PISA results also show progress in tackling the historic shortcoming of a long tail of under-performance). Of course this reform has seen ups and downs and has made many demands but for individual pupils and our place in international league tables it has brought a rich harvest.

A second reason is so obvious that all too often it is taken for granted: this country has very good teachers and headteachers and the PISA results are a tribute to them. In general, they are skilled, committed, hard-working and able to manage change. The professional development programmes - whether national, as in the case of key stage 3, or at school level - succeed because the levels of knowledge and experience on which they build are already high. Moreover, the teacher-training reforms have ensured that those joining the profession now are better-prepared than ever. Above all, the results show the immense potential of creative partnership between teachers and government. None of us, after all, thinks the job is done. Heads and teachers will never be satisfied while there are pupils who fall short of what is possible. There are still too many disaffected young people and our drop-out rates at 16 are still too high. Moreover, the PISA results reinforce the need to reduce the results gap between different social classes through reforms such as Excellence in Cities. And in any case the 21st century will demand higher standards, in the broadest sense, than until recently we ever imagined was possible.

As investment in education continues to rise; as Estelle Morris builds the partnership with teachers promised in her recent White Paper; as the major national strategies - literacy and numeracy, key stage 3 and 14-19 - impact, the potential is immense. Teachers and government can face the future knowing that they are building on success; with confidence; without complacency; and aware of the chance to provide the present generation with the best education ever been provided for anyone, any time, anywhere.

Michael Barber, head of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, formerly headed the Standards and Effectiveness Unit in the Department for Education and Employment Analysis, 24, 25