Teachers' daily competitive and cooperative practices impact students' motivation and academic achievement. The present research was conducted among French in-service teachers. Our goal was to examine one of the predictors of the use of competitive and cooperative pedagogical practices by teachers: their belief in school meritocracy. A sample of 818 teachers completed an online survey. They were asked to report their levels of beliefs in school meritocracy (e.g., "At school, where there is a will, there is a way") as well as how often they use competitive (e.g., "Encourage competition between students to get them to excel) and cooperative practices (e.g., "Have students cooperate with each other so that each student progresses in learning") in their class. Results showed that the more teachers believed in school meritocracy, the more likely they were to promote a performance goal structure in their class, which was, in turn associated with more frequent use of competitive practices. Conversely, the more teachers believed in school meritocracy, the less likely they were to promote mastery goals, which in turn were associated with more cooperative practices.