Recent discussions in science, politics and society offer starting points for rethinking the approach to the wicked problem of educational inequality. In our paper, we want to do this by reviewing research, policy and practice in primary education in the Netherlands. Our reflections are first focused on the state of the art in research and the complex educational system from a theoretical perspective (section 2); next we focus on examples of how educational inequality and segregation in policy and practice are addressed in the Netherlands (section 3). Finally, we discuss the new methodological approaches that should be complemented with a new philosophical perspective on segregation and inequality in public policy (section 4). We develop new perspectives using the Netherlands as a specific case study, expecting our perspectives have a more general meaning and might also be useful in the fight against educational inequality and segregation elsewhere.