Personalisation is an emerging "movement" within education. Its roots reside in marketing theory, not in educational theory. As a concept it admits a good deal of confusion. It can refer either to a new mode of governance for the public services, or it qualifies the noun "learning", as in "personalised learning". The concern here is with its intellectual affinity to child-centred education, one which the government in England has strongly denied. On balance, the government's view of personalisation is not of a piece with what may commonly be regarded as child-centred education. But the strong semantic accord between the terms "personalisation" and "child-centred education" provokes a question: why does the government not provide a term which unequivocally distinguishes its current "vision" for education from child-centred education? By retaining the term personalisation, the government purports to do two things: first, because of its focus on personalised "tailored" needs and co-produced solutions, it adapts education even further to a consumerist society; and second, because the term personalisation strikes a chord with the discourse of child-centred education, it blurs the fact that little to do with pedagogy or with curriculum has in fact been changed. The term personalisation generates a nostalgic appeal to better times long gone.