The Politics of Area-Based Education Partnerships: Seizing Power Lying in the Street

Area-based educational partnerships (ABEPs) have been a recurring feature of the English education system for over three decades. Created through government initiatives to address local educational challenges, they brought together schools and local authorities to improve educational outcomes. However, the decline of local authority oversight and the academisation of schools have produced a fragmented educational landscape. In the absence of significant education policy between 2016 and 2024, new forms of partnerships have emerged involving local authorities, school leaders, multi-academy trust CEOs, and other stakeholders. Occupying a liminal space between the state and local education providers, these partnerships seek to coordinate educational improvement within increasingly complex governance arrangements. Drawing on empirical data from the Area-Based Partnership Project (2021–2023), this article examines how ABEPs are constituted, governed, and politically negotiated. Using Arendtian concepts of natality, power, and collective action, I argue that ABEPs represent new political beginnings that create spaces for local agency and collaboration within a fragmented system. Yet their capacity to reshape local educational governance remains constrained by market competition, performative pressures, and evolving state policy. The significance of ABEPs therefore lies less in revolutionary transformation than in demonstrating that collective political action remains possible within contemporary educational governance.