There is a long established link between education, disadvantage and place which has so far proved stubbornly resistant to policy. Across Europe, there have been a wide range of area-based initiatives (ABIs) attempting to break this link. These have specifically targeted disadvantaged neighbourhoods, towns and cities, and sought to transform educational outcomes and wider life chances for their children and young people (Demeuse et al, 2008). While ABIs’ approaches have varied, they have nonetheless shared a belief that areas with high levels of poverty and disadvantage need some form of compensatory measures to help children succeed (Smith, 1999). But while there is an intrinsic logic to this argument, overwhelmingly, the evidence to date is that ABIs have had, at best, rather limited, short-term and patchy benefits (Power et al, 2005).                  

To understand better why this should be, and what ABIs might realistically be expected to achieve, throughout 2010 the Centre for Equity in Education at the University of Manchester and The Centre for Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, hosted a series of joint seminars on the future of area based initiatives. This paper reports learning from the seminar series, which specifically addressed the following research questions:

• Do ABIs have a future in efforts to break the link between education, disadvantage and place?
• How can ABIs be made more effective?

To answer these questions, five interconnected seminars were held, each with invited expert speakers. As set out below, the seminars were intended to reflect historical and contemporary developments; explore different conceptual and disciplinary standpoints; and unite research, policy and practice concerns:

• Seminar 1: Learning from past ABIs. This seminar explored the existing research-base on ABIs. In particular, it showcased findings on Education Priority Areas (EPAs) in England (Smith, 1987), and Zone’s d’Educational Prioritaires (ZEPs) in France (Etienne, 2008), as these provide good examples of initiatives embodying markedly different conceptual standpoints and policy approaches.      
• Seminar 2: Areas and their effects in relation to education and disadvantage. ABIs have been heavily criticised for their weak conceptualisation of areas per se, and of how areas interact with educational settings (Lupton, 2010). In response, this seminar explored learning from human geography, ethnography, and neighbourhood effects research.
• Seminar 3: Learning from current innovative ABIs. In England, new forms of locally-led ABIs have been emerging, linked to wider agendas of neighbourhood renewal and multi-agency working (Dyson et al, in press). This seminar explored ‘new-style’ ABIs, which typically lie outside traditional governance arrangements, and involve partnerships between education services and social enterprises.  
• Seminar 4: Policy frameworks – what is needed to support ABIs? High profile speakers from UK government, including Naomi Eisenstadt, (former Director of the Social Exclusion Task Force and Sure Start), and Jon Coles (Director-General, Schools Division, Department for Education) debated how, in future, policy could best act on the relationship between education, disadvantage and place.
• Seminar 5: What future for ABIs? Learning from the previous seminars was drawn together to address the series’ overarching research questions.      

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