HFL Education is a proud steering group member of AEPA, the Area-Based Education Partnerships Association. AEPA is led by a national steering group, which is co-chaired by Baroness Estelle Morris and Dame Christine Gilbert CBE and works with over 30 organisations like ours – not-for-profit third parties working with LAs across local areas – bridging the gap between national policy and local delivery.
Local education partnerships (LEPs) like HFL, serve as collaborative, school-led organisations, focused on improving education quality and equity within specific localities. They fill the gap left by school autonomy and fragmented systems by fostering collaboration among schools, local authorities and community stakeholders, to enhance outcomes for all children and young people.
AEPA members include local partnerships from Hertfordshire, Haringey, Camden, Tower Hamlets, Birmingham, Surrey and beyond. All are able to demonstrate a strong, resilient education eco-system that performs well for the benefit of children and young people.
AEPA are not exclusive. They are open to new members and to wide participation in their meetings, debates and events. They want to complement not duplicate, and to work with all those who believe that a strong and healthy school system requires an open, collaborative, accountable and ambitious culture that listens to, and works for, the benefit of all.
Find more information about membership or email info@aepa.org.uk.
The AEPA Paper: Belonging and Excellence
In October 2025 AEPA launched a paper titled ‘Belonging and Excellence: The Importance of Local Education Partnerships’ to explore how the positive outcomes in local, place based partnerships could shape the future of the education system. The foreword is written by the AEPA co-chairs Baroness Estelle Morris and Dame Christine Gilbert, who both chair local partnerships.
As one of the first local partnerships (developed in 2013), we are working with AEPA to celebrate the successes of the local education partnership model and supporting them to build a case for moving from interventionist, corrective actions in schools to celebrating and replicating the strength of areas and schools with strong, long histories of success.
Prevention is, AEPA argues, more powerful than cure. For many years the education policy has been focused on intervention in the event of failure, creating systems to learn from “turnarounds” and building the capacity to step in at this point. This is too late, though – pupils, families, staff and leaders have then already been failed by the system for some time before these policies take action. Turning this on its head, looking at where success has been maintained and where systemic failure has been averted, would benefit everyone in the system. AEPA member areas are able to demonstrate high levels of collaboration, strong attainment outcomes and success in OFSTED inspections, all at a much lower cost than systems built on national intervention programmes.
AEPA Briefings
In November 2025, AEPA launched a series of online briefings designed to enable schools, trusts and settings across the country to receive key policy and practice developments directly from sector leaders. These sessions are free to all AEPA members like us, and their school communities. The first, with Professor Becky Francis, on the findings of the 2025 curriculum review attracted over 650 school leaders and the second with Sir Martyn Oliver, on the renewed Ofsted Framework generated so many questions that Sir Martyn offered to join us again in the future to explore the topic further.
Sign up to our news alerts to be the first to hear about the next briefing.
If you’d like more information on how we work with AEPA, please contact Penny Slater our partnership lead penny.slater@hfleducation.org.
