Even though the meritocratic ideal is rarely fully attained in educational institutions, students’, teachers’, and parents’ belief that schools are meritocratic engines that maintain the legitimacy of these educational institutions. In this article, we study the belief in school meritocracy beyond the educational context and explore its pernicious effect on perceptions and attitudes towards the social class hierarchy in society. Results of two studies conducted in an Australian university (one correlational and one experimental; Ntotal = 390) suggest that the belief in school meritocracy reduces the perceived unfairness of social class inequality in society. The analyses of two international datasets (Ntotal = 78’421) in over 40 countries show that belief in school meritocracy decreases support for policies to reduce income inequality. Together, these studies show that the school meritocracy belief has broader societal impact in that it is associated with attitudes contributing to the legitimation of social and economic inequality.