Ecole n° 1 is a primary school situated in a neighbourhood of Brussels with a high non-native population. It is a school that practises a system of positive discrimination. Branded as a “wastebin of a school”, an epithet as offensive as it is derogatory, Ecole n°1 has children from twenty-three different countries on its register. The number of Belgian pupils can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The headmaster is a humanist fighting a daily battle against exclusion, failure and racism. This film takes us through the events of the school year from its beginning in September 2001 to the prize-giving ceremony in June 2002.