The geese are flying south for winter. England is undergoing a new wave of educational reform. Each of these statements highlights a recurring pattern of behaviour. The latter is not quite as old in its heritage as the former. It just feels that way to many caught up in the reforms. This newly intensified wave of educational reform began in England following the General Election of 2010. Integral to this wave is a radical restructuring of the local level the middle tier within the national school system. Unprecedented increases in the numbers of publicly funded schools becoming independent of local authorities, together with other effects of national educational policy, are reshaping the landscape of the local. As a consequence, all who populate this landscape the people who lead, learn and act within it are having to make sense of what is uncharted territory. One of the pressing questions in a complex and evolving process is what is actually happening at the local level. How is it being reshaped? BELMAS (the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society) responded to this question by initiating a programme of grants for small-scale research projects. Offered competitively, these grants enabled researchers to undertake studies that illuminate a range of issues, highlighted in the call for funding, concerning the landscape of the local in the context of differing local conditions. These issues include the range of types of schools which are emerging and the relationships between them, local governance arrangements and accountability patterns and the changing role of local authorities, the structures and pressures that promote competition or lead to collaboration, and the impact on leadership and leaders. In the event 19 projects were funded in two annual tranches (2011 and 2012). The full list of awards can be found on the BELMAS website (http://www.belmas.org.uk). Grant holders for five of these projects were invited to write articles for this Special Issue. The choice was difficult, but preference was given to a set of complementary studies which contribute both theoretically and empirically to our understanding of what is happening in England and which, consequently, have potential implications for school restructuring elsewhere. Between them the articles address the range of issues featured in the call for funding. In addition to these five articles, we have written an introductory article which attempts to place the concerns of the Special Issue within a broad conceptual framework and we invited an additional article which places them in an international context. The first contribution is our article ‘Understanding the local: Themes and issues in the experience of structural reform in England’. This places the reforms in a historical context, suggesting aspects of both continuity with and radical change from what has gone before. Noting the potential for fragmentation and increased complexity at the local level to which the changes give rise, the Educational Management Administration & Leadership 2014, Vol. 42(3) 321–323 a The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1741143214532070 emal.sagepub.com