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On the basis of data from two quantitative surveys, the National Education Ministry’s “1997 Panel” (N = 9,641) and INED’s “Trajectories and origins” (N = 21,761), this article aims to describe and empirically interpret differences in academic achievement between children of natives and children of immigrants and within the latter group as they develop over the entire course of compulsory schooling in France. The article contributes to the sociology of academic inequality in four ways: the use of precise categories of origin, which brings to light the degree of academic heterogeneity within the “second generation;” the use of an exact matching methodology, which allows one to avoid the assumption that social characteristics have a uniform effect on academic achievement in all groups; the study of the early formation of academic inequalities starting from the first year of primary school; the interpretation of academic achievement differentials that takes into account immigrants’ pre-migration social characteristics.