School consultations open a window on the interplay between the two institutions of school and family home.

Story fragments are analyzed in terms of teachers’ and parents’ collaboration on the basis of their knowledge of the school's relevance structure.

I discuss stories as membership categorization practices that typify pupils (Mazeland & Berenst, 2008) and help to classify them within the German school system.

The problem is not that some parents sometimes disagree with teachers’ judgements and career suggestions, but rather that not all parents are able to position themselves in the highly routinized and consistent stratification system.