The government is to make it easier for businesses and charities to take over schools to help advance the academy programme.
The £2m up-front fee to sponsor an academy will be scrapped from 2011. Instead, private firms will be assessed on how well they can run the academy.
The announcement comes on the same day that the UK's largest academy opens its doors.
Created from three schools in the city, the Nottingham Academy will welcome 2,200 pupils, increasing to 3,600 once construction work is completed.
Ministers, including children's secretary Ed Balls, are visiting new schools and academies across the country today.
Balls said: "Academy sponsorship has never just been about the money - we want the people and organisations with the right skills and leadership to come into the Academy programme.
"Scrapping the £2m sponsorship has led to a boom in the number of universities, schools and colleges coming in - so it makes sense to do the same for the voluntary and private sector."
While the government will reach its 2010 target of 200 academies this term, the planned overhaul of all secondary schools has been hit by delays and overspend.
A report by the National Audit Office found that the programme was 21 months late and £10bn over budget.
But Balls argued that the government remained committed to refurbishing all secondary schools and half of primary schools.
"Schools in England have had the biggest sustained investment in facilities for decades - with an eightfold real terms rise between 1997 and 2011 alone.
"Around 4,000 schools and tens of thousands of classrooms have been newly built, rebuilt or refurbished thanks to our £53bn of capital investment over the last 12 years," he said.
The Conservative Party yesterday criticised the government for wasting much of its £50bn 'Building Schools for the Future' programme.
Freedom of Information figures obtained by the shadow children’s secretary Michael Gove revealed £170m of the school refurbishment budget was spent on consultants.
Gove said: "In tough economic times it is vital that ministers get good value for taxpayers’ money.
"But under the government’s bureaucratic school refurbishment scheme, millions has already been spent on consultants with hardly any improvements actually delivered.
