In Chapter Eight, we explored not only how area-based initiatives (ABIs) might be evaluated in what would inevitably be a long-term process, but also how they might be monitored. In this chapter, we want to consider how monitoring information of this kind might be used within a wider governance and accountability framework. Our concern is to outline arrangements that are practicable within the current policy context, and, therefore, we focus particularly on the policy trajectory set by the Coalition government in office at the time of writing. However, it is worth noting that this trajectory is, in many respects, a continuation of policy trends that have been evident for at least the past 30 years and that there is little evidence of a serious political movement to develop radically different policy directions.

Some of the principles that these arrangements will need to embody are already clear. Crucially, the process of developing an ABI locally will need to be led and managed in such a way as to ensure its democratic legitimacy across stakeholder groups. Creating mechanisms for effective partnership-working will be vital to acting on factors and processes that cut across service and administrative boundaries, and spatial scales. This cannot simply be a mechanical exercise of setting up systems and structures. As we indicated in Chapter Seven, it will also be important that whatever systems and structures are put in place, they are able to create and protect spaces in which stakeholders can: learn from one another; allow their current beliefs and practices to be challenged; and (re)negotiate their roles in tackling disadvantage on an area basis. We have also envisaged that the next generation of ABIs will be part of a multi-scale spectrum of policy approaches to tackling disadvantage, and, insofar as is possible and desirable, should be aligned with strategies being pursued at other spatial scales.

Fundamentally, all of this will require that new-style ABIs are underpinned by governance and accountability arrangements that can support the development of new relationships between: local and national concerns; education and other services, and education providers themselves; the education system, children and young people, and their families and communities; and the diverse communities within places. Moreover, although we focus in this chapter on structures, we do not underestimate the social and political challenges inherent in developing these relationships.