Both in the United States and the United Kingdom there has been a recent resurgence of interest and support for "new localism" in response to the need to provide local solutions to national complex problems. In this paper, the authors begin by exploring the contextual framework in the U.S. and the UK, explaining recent policy reform and development in the two countries. The authors then provide a framework based upon the UK experience for bringing localism together as a coherent strategy for education reform. (Contains 2 figures, 3 tables and 3 notes.)