In earlier issues of FORUM, Nigel Gann has written on the impact of academisation on state-funded schools and the growing democratic deficit in educational leadership. In 2018, Andrew Allen and Nigel Gann wrote on the dismantling of the English education service and offered some suggestions for a new representative model. This article explores some of the outcomes of the fragmentation of school provision and identifies the seven deadly sins enabled by the corporatisation of English schooling. It draws some parallels between the academisation process and the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. It goes on to propose an ethical platform for an opportunistic relaunch of state-funded comprehensive community-based education following the pandemic.