Background: UK government policy views collaboration with outstanding schools as a way of helping apparently less successful schools to close the attainment gap. However, there has been little debate about criteria for defining a school's success or failure. Moreover it is unclear which aspects of outstanding schools could readily transfer to…

Social mobility, or the lack of it, is back in the news following the release of a University and College Union (UCU) report, "Location, Location, Location," and a speech from the Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, in which he warned that there is no silver bullet when it comes to social mobility. The UCU report revealed that where a…

Both in the United States and the United Kingdom there has been a recent resurgence of interest and support for "new localism" in response to the need to provide local solutions to national complex problems. In this paper, the authors begin by exploring the contextual framework in the U.S. and the UK, explaining recent policy reform and…