This contribution analyses the conflicts between the National Agency for Education and fourteen municipalities in regard the practices for approval of the establishment of independent schools in Sweden. It uses data from text analysis from nineteen acts from the National Agency for Education concerning these conflicts during the period 2002-2003. These acts include the pronouncements with regard to these establishments from the municipalities, the National Agency for Education, the national courts and the involved independent schools. Behind the differences in the practices of the different actors in the process of the approval of independent schools we can see tensions between the conception of equity as the claim of equality in results, in standards and in resources and the conception of equity as the claim of accepting differences. The contribution examines even the ways in which these conflicts are negotiated in the practice. The study presented in this contribution is a part of a larger research project financed by the Swedish Research Council on the consequences that different interpretations of the concept of equivalence have in different contexts, in different educations policies and school practices in Sweden.