The broad purpose of this paper is that of considering the full implications for effective rural education which are opened up by a far-ranging attempt at rural reform in Tanzania. An important factor which has conditioned the scope and character of change has been the highly centralized quality of educational planning itself. Three conditions are singled out as the most critical determinants of development policy: the role of the polity in decision-making, the stress on the reorganizationof the administration. The paper considers in some detail the new methodological approaches to the identification of skill and production needs in rural areas, changes in the nature of educational administration which follow from the emphasis on rural development and village autonomy, and changes in the oppotunity structure and assessment and selection procedures which are an integral part of the overall aim. The author concludes that we cannot consider rural learninng needs apart from the dominant national opportunity structure to which they are inevitably subordinated.