The purpose of this study is to analyse pupil welfare team meetings as an institutional context for handling dilemmas of schooling. Our focus is on how difficulties encountered by teachers and pupils are categorized and accounted for by team members (teachers, school administrators, and various experts). As a discourse community, the pupil welfare team has considerable power in defining problems and in allocating resources for dealing with them. The data for this study were gathered in a primary school, where the welfare team's meetings were documented over the course of 1 year. The results show that meetings are highly routinized and characterized by a high degree of consensus among the staff as to the perspectives relevant for handling the problems encountered. The accounts produced individualize the problems of pupils by pointing to lack of ability or other necessary qualifications on the part of the individual pupil for managing life in school. The problems are very rarely seen as consequential to pedagogical practices or teacher actions. It is noted that the pupils have no say in articulating their accounts of the issues discussed.