The UK Government's commitment to Full-Service or Extended Schools is now firmly established in the Every Child Matters legislation. Here David Limond examines these developments, largely inspired and dominated by North American models, and in the light of older English and Scottish traditions argues for a more radical approach that exemplifies people's capacity to take charge of their own lives without bureaucratic interference. He argues that modern British Third Way communitarianism animating the current agenda is too often haphazard, poorly thought-out, driven by novelty and easy prey to authoritarian tendencies. He suggests current models of community school are little more than the extension of medicalised surveillance into the lives of certain people and the industrialization of education as a whole.