Equity from the middle might be associated with practices that set fair limits on educational capabilities. Richardson [4] has drawn attention to the question of establishing limits on the range of capabilities from which an individual can choose and Sen [5] has criticised what he calls transcendant views of justice, preferring those that can help rank one set of choice above another. Equity from the middle in education might be processes that enable these limits and forms of ranking to take place fairly [3]. In a research project with colleagues working for the Ministry of Education in Kenya we tried to assess how changes in the KCPE examination (a national exam taken at the end of the primary cycle) related to statistical data on the poverty of certain districts [8]. We were looking at the distribution of instructional materials and teacher training in very different regions with different levels of wealth and poverty and different social conditions for girls and boys. This equity from the middle, associated with these flows of education resources, is often termed efficiency [3]. However we were not only interested in whether or not training or textbooks had been delivered, but the extent to which their circulation was redistributive to the poorest children and subject to discussion by school committees in which the poorest parents could participate. We were thus concerned to chart the ways in which equity from the middle articulated with equity from above, that is some rules regarding the provision of quality education to all children in Kenya, and equity from below, which would ensure the participation of community discussion of that education that would include even the poorest parents. Provision of equity from the middle (instructional materials and teacher training) was thus necessary but not sufficient for an expansion of educational capabilities for children in diverse regions of Kenya. But the assessment of equity from the middle allowed us to make some judgements about equity from above and below [7]. All the three forms of equity I have distinguished are important in order to expand capabilities in education and assess equality, given human diversity. Equity from below which entails dialogue and discussion about the expansion of a capability set across many different points of view cannot be sustained without an architecture of regulations and laws associated with equity from above. But without the flows of ideas, skill, material resources, and time which substantively expand the capability set and are associated with equity in the middle no education is delivered. Equity from above without a specification of the nature and indeed the limits on resources and capabilities associated with equity in the middle, and the tolerance and respect and fairness associated with equity from below, is likely to become hollow rhetoric. Equity from the middle, without the connection to reasoned legal frameworks associated with equity from above and participation, dialogue and critique associated with equity from below is likely to become a sterile managerialism [8]. Distinguishing different forms of equity highlights a number of process that complement each other in expanding a capability set. From the bottom it is important to look at agency, from the top to look at rules and institutions that frame negative and positive freedoms linked to a theory of justice, and from the middle to ensure flows of resources, a dynamic between ideas and values that is attentive to limits and judgements, but not just meagrely constrained by these assessments [1]. How can we operationalise equity and equality of capabilities in ways that are useful to education planners? A 6-year study in a secondary school in a poor township in Durban shows some of the ways in which equity works, but is also very difficult to implement [2]. In the first years of the study teachers and learners talked of AIDs as far away, mentioned in connection with distant relatives or pupils who had long left. Gender hierarchies seemed entrenched [3]. Girls were described with derision and women teachers did not talk confidently in staff meetings. By the end of the study much had changed. Teachers and children talked about gender in many settings. The headmaster was immensely proud of the work of the older women guidance teachers. An AIDs awareness day, organised by the student representative council, had resulted in murals painted in the centre of the school. Children talked about what they did to support friends with AIDs. However, there were still assumptions about how girls should be ‘moral’ and many advocates of compulsory virginity testing. However a number of girls talked about making up their own minds on these issues. Despite many difficulties, which included lack of infrastructure and young people’s difficulty in gaining access to work or higher education after school, elements were evident of the school community working towards expanding capabilities and negotiating diversity equitably [6]. The school would have found it enormously difficult to build these kinds of relationships if it had not had recourse to equity from above, from the middle and from below. The South African Constitution guarantees all children the right to education and the provincial ministry has reasonably fair mechanisms for teacher deployment. Thus, because of equity from above, children from the poorest households were not being denied access to education or failing to progress because of a lack of resource. There was a flow of information and training packages to teachers and learners concerning gender equality, AIDs awareness, health and rights representing equity from the middle. Their value was enhanced because of the legislation on fair admission and progression (equity from above) and the opportunities for critique and discussion (equity from below). Conditions had been established in the school for equity from below where teachers and learners with very different views about gender, the AIDs epidemic, politics and economics in South Africa could talk and listen to each other. I do not want to romanticise this school as all who worked there also talked about many problems, but I do want to point out how these intersecting forms of equity contributed to expanding the capability space allowing for combinations of valuable objectives by diverse actors [5]. This paper has distinguished different ways of thinking about equity in education and considered how these might support the expansion of a capability set and contribute to equalising capabilities in education. In so doing it has attempted to begin to point to connections between the idea of equity, ubiquitous in the education policy vocabulary, and more normative discussions of equality and capability. The analysis has thus associated equity with particular forms of social arrangement which support the freedoms and forms of equality associated with capabilities. The discussion has thus attempted to reposition the term equity detaching it from an evasion of a connection with equality, which some of the unspecified policy language seems to suggest. In defining equity in education using shifting historical contexts the analysis has sought to lay out how a substantive link between equity and equality in the space of capabilities might be explored.