The role and nature of local governance in public services is being deliberated within different national systems in Europe (e.g. Newman 2005). Within the UK, debates about democracy and the local delivery of services, now known as the ‘New Localism’ (Pratchett 2004), have grown in response to the dysfunctions and political unpopularity of a top-down managerialist approach. Research, however, suggests that different versions of the ‘Local’ are being proposed by the current UK Labour Government, the main opposition Conservative Party and research and practitioner communities. Furthermore, the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales are developing distinctive systems of governance of public services and of education in particular (see ttp://www.tlrp.org/themes/NewDirections). This paper focuses on different versions of the Local and their implications for the governance and reform of upper secondary education and lifelong learning across three different countries of the UK. The paper will ask the following questions: 1. What are the key policies on governance and the delivery of learning at the local level proposed by the Labour Government, the main Opposition Party and the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales? 2. What issues and debates have researcher and practitioner communities raised in relation to these policy positions? 3. To what extent do these policies and debates constitute different versions of the Local and how can they be understood in terms of their relationship to three key dimensions of governance - managerialism, marketisation and democratization (Newman 2001, Avis 2009)? 4. What are the implications of these different approaches for policy-making in upper secondary education and lifelong learning in the UK and beyond? The theoretical framework will comprise the three conceptual dimensions in Q3, together with the further development of new concepts of governance and localism – ‘devolved social partnership’ (Coffield et al. 2008) and ‘local learning ecologies’ (Hodgson and Spours 2009).

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