Description: A glimpse into the past shows us that the idea of equal educational opportunities results from the establishment of the more general principle of equal opportunities. However, the principle of equal opportunities is nothing more than the application of the basic principle of justice (equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally) in situations where several individuals compete to achieve the same goal (such as victory in a competition, a position at a prestigious and selective university, a successful performance in a competition for a job, etc.); a goal that cannot be achieved by all. Equal opportunities were first understood as equal accessibility. Later on, the concept expanded to include the equality of starting points (Sartori 1996). If, for instance, we wish to place individuals who are by nature different at the same starting position, it is necessary to either grant a privilege to the underprivileged or take away a privilege from the privileged. This, however, implies an artificial creation of differences and discrimination, respectively. Thus, inequality becomes an instrument of equality because it corrects the previous inequality: the new equality therefore results from equalising two inequalities (Bobbio 1999). The opportunity to ensure equal starting points for everyone was initially recognised in the accessibility of equal education for all. The solution was, at first, offered through the introduction of compulsory and free-of-charge education, then through the differentiation of the school system, and subsequently through the separation of instructions, as the equality of educational opportunities requires unequal offer and treatment. This is so because in circumstances involving initial differences between pupils, equal offers or treatment of different individuals would make these differences even more striking. A typical example of an effort aimed at granting equal starting points was the introduction of compensatory educational programmes for school children from socially disadvantaged environments. This is an example of a strategy for reducing social inequality in education by granting privilege to the underprivileged. An example of a reverse strategy (i.e. a strategy for taking away a privilege from the privileged) is the admission policies pursued by universities in several former socialist countries. In this system, a certain amount of points were added to the final examination results of graduates from rural or working-class families. Thus, equally capable and successful children of intellectuals were automatically put at a disadvantage and, in some instances, even deprived of admission opportunities at public universities due to the special admission quotas. The question is whether such educational policies and strategies of ensuring equal opportunities for all children are morally justified. If we draw from the basic principle of justice, according to which equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally, then the above-stated strategies appears to be just. This is because they put pupils in situations where unequals (those from culturally and socially deprived environments and those of rural or working-class backgrounds) are treated differently than the remainder of the pupils, while equals (i.e. each of these two basic categories within which pupils are treated as equals) enjoy equal treatment. As far as compensatory programmes are concerned, there is a broad consensus that their introduction is morally justified and just. The policy of additional points and admission quotas, however, is more controversial, even though it seems to be in compliance with the very principle of social justice, which John Rawls calls the difference principle. Pursuant to this principle, only those inequalities that provide benefit to people from the most deprived social backgrounds are admissible (Rawls 1999). Inequalities in the educational system introduced through points and quotas are beneficial to socially deprived pupils. Simultaneously, however, they are harmful to other pupils. Such measures are morally controversial, since they allow educational authorities to punish these pupils, even though the students are neither guilty of nor responsible for their social position (as they have not chosen the family into which they were born). They are also morally controversial for treating these pupils as a means to achieve political ends (changes in the social structure of students). Since such measures treat these pupils as a means rather than as an end, they are in direct opposition to the categorical imperative and are therefore, at least within the context of Kant's ethics, morally unacceptable. They are morally inadmissible regardless of the nobility of the objectives for the achievement of which such measures were taken. Methodology: Critical analysis. Conclusions: If we accept that the philosophy of education is first and foremost an interrogation and that we (as philosophers of education) have to "put into question all that we know or believe about education" (Reboul 1995), then we also have to do this for the concepts of equal educational opportunities. Therefore, I expect that this critical analysis will provide some new elements for the understanding of this old and well-known topic.