Rural equality of opportunity is a single, composite topic, which encompasses three types of rural residents and eight rural specific concepts of equality of opportunity. The three types of rural residents are: indigenous minorities; country town or remote rural residents and rural itinerants; and neo-ruralists or urban expatriates. The first two categories have historically been denied equal opportunity. Equality of opportunity is not perceived the same by all; equality is as diverse as the rural population served. Types of equality found in the literature to be rural specific are: (1) the foundation system of equality of opportunity; (2) the concept of minimum-attainment; (3) the leveling concept; (4) the concept of competition; (5) the equal-dollars-per-pupil concept; (6) the classification concept; (7) the full-opportunity concept; and (8) the concept of fiscal neutrality. A partnership between local residents, with their particular rural perspective and intuition for what is needed, and professionals trained to recognise the means by which objectives of education may be met, is essential to providing equality in educational opportunity. (AH)