Coalition education policy threatens to transform the school system in England. A combination of public spending cuts, and the drive to making all schools Academies, represents a key moment in the restructuring of the education service along neo-liberal lines. This article argues that there is nothing distinctively "new" about Coalition schools policy, but rather it represents a realisation of the "1988 project" to break up and privatise state education in England. What took a major step forward in the form of the 1988 Education Reform Act is now reaching its logical conclusion in Coalition policy. This article identifies how such policy threatens to finally secure the dismantling of a democratic system by replacing it with a state-subsidised free market. The article also sets out the possibilities for a "coalition of resistance" to emerge, capable of interrupting this latest and decisive stage in neo-liberal reform.