According to a recent study (Almqvist & Granlund, accepted), participation is not strongly related to type and degree of disability but probably to the context of the individual as well as generic personal factors. Such diverse factors can over time become orchestrated and pull the development of individuals with disability in a certain direction. This study compares how 959 students with and without disabilities in two age‐groups 7–12 and 13–17 perceive their participation in school activities. The main method of analysis is one‐way‐ANOVA. The result indicates that students without disabilities rated their perceived participation higher, especially in unstructured “free”; activities. Further, students without disabilities experience a higher degree of autonomy and rate the availability of school activities as higher. Students with disabilities rate their interaction with teachers as better and more frequent, but their interaction with peers as less frequent. These differences increase with age and may reinforce a stigmatization process.