School education in French-speaking Belgium has made widespread use of grade retention in managing pupils in difficulties. Since 1995, a number of political initiatives have aimed to reduce grade retention in primary schools, forbidding the repetition of a year within cycles of study and promoting changes in pedagógica! practices. The main goal of this reform is to fight the social selection observed with grade retention and to increase equality of opportunity and equality of results at school- leaving. An analysis of primary-level teachers' perceptions and practices highlights how much this reform confiicts with teachers' spontaneous conceptions of equality. In this way, different meanings of equality are presented and discussed in this paper. Competition between schools in a quasi-market environment also appears as an obstacle to the egalitarian project.Key words: School education, Grade retention, Social selection, Equality.