Description: This is a theoretical paper. For nearly two hundred years the 'grammar' or code of schooling has been little changed, notwithstanding the occasional 'progressive' reform. Bureaucracy has been its enduring form. Now a new economy looms. It seeks 'support' from education. In England, a 'revised' educational code appears to be emerging. It centres upon the concept of 'personalisation'. This 'personalisation' refers isomorphically to two levels: first, as a new mode of public service delivery, which supersedes the former 'new public management'; and second, as a new 'grammar' for the school, in the guise of 'personalised learning'. At this stage, its formulations are incoherent and inchoate, at one and the same time causing not a little bewilderment but nevertheless somehow resonating with the culture of consumption and its appeals to the project of the self. As a policy, personalisation lacks precision, especially in relation to that aspect of it known as 'personalised learning'. Its basis is not educational theory, but contemporary marketing theory. Even so, with its loose affinities to child-centredness, to democracy and to consumerism its appeal may be difficult to deny. The analysis draw on contemporary social and marketing theory. Specifically, the stages of the argument are as follows. First, in order to contextualise personalisation, consideration is given to changes within contemporary modernity. Second, in relation to education, it is argued that the government's increasing use of the term personalisation indicates an elaboration of that marketing discourse which the earlier school-choice legislation had set in train. Personalisation - the latest phase in the marketisation of education - has clear affinities to contemporary marketing theory. But whereas the earlier 'quasi-market' phase applied to the structure of school systems, personalisation takes the marketisation of education a stage further by placing it at the very heart of the pedagogical process itself, as in the phrase 'personalised learning'. Third, and finally, it is suggested that what is emerging in England's school system is an inchoate re-branding, in the guise of personalisation, which leaves the 'grammar' or 'code' of education little changed. Conclusions: The 'grammar' of schools - its pedagogical code - has changed little, notwithstanding various 'aberrations' such as child-centred education which resonated with some intellectuals, politicians and popular culture during the 1960s. Whereas progressive education was rooted theoretically in Romanticism and developmental psychology, both traditional education and the emergent personalisation are rooted in matters economic. The traditional 'grammar' of schools has centred upon mass production and mass consumption. Bureaucracy has been its enduring form. Behaviourism has largely comprised its theoretical basis. Now education also purports to strike an economic chord: a new one, for a new economy. But this time it is set to chime with the consumer 'ethic' of co-customisation, thereby setting aside the producer ethic of mass production. It is the marketing theorists who are in the vanguard of this movement (though some of them may not yet be aware of the influence of their ideas on education). Meanwhile, the search has started for a new psychology of pedagogy which will 'support' the new market. Any psychology of education which can speak to 'solution-spaces' and to 'co-production' will see its market capitalisation rise. (Activity Theory seems to be well placed.) In its 'market appeal', personalisation - despite its current incoherence and vagueness of definition, especially in relation to curriculum and pedagogy - runs with the grain of identity-seeking individuals who are continually on the make(over). But, significantly, the liberal use of the prefix 'co-' (as in co-customisation and co-production) lends to it the impression that here is emerging a democratic practice wherein hierarchies, league-tables and the old mantras of efficiency and effectiveness can all be set aside. But personalisation remains framed by what Hargreaves (2003) refers to as the command-and-control ethos of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), the 'system designer'. At this juncture, it is difficult to discern whether or not personalisation constitutes the passage of the existing code to a new one, or whether it is simply a bewildering mix - the amorphous shape of things to come