Set up school

The School module accompanies a child's school life: timetable, tests and class tests, grades, holidays and an evening reminder for packing the school bag. You set it up once per child, then only maintain what changes.

If the module has just been turned on and no child has been set up yet, an assistant guides you through everything important in six steps – five to fill in and a summary at the end. Setting it up is for whoever has the “Manage school” permission; everyone else in the household sees a note here about who to ask.

The setup assistant

• Child – Who are we setting up school for? Each child gets exactly one school profile, which stays the same across school years.
• School – federal state, school type and class; you can give the school's name, but you don't have to. The federal state is the most important detail: it drives holidays, wording and the weighting suggestions.
• Grades – the grading scale (grades 1–6, points in the sixth form, the scales for Austria and Switzerland, or a purely narrative report with no numbers) and who's allowed to see the grades. More on this under “Who can see the grades?”.
• Periods – when school starts, how long a period is, when breaks are, and whether the school has A/B weeks. From this, we build the time grid for every day. More on this under “Timetable, breaks & A/B weeks”.
• Subjects – your child's subjects from a suggested list, matching the federal state and school type. Anything missing, you add as free text; you can create clubs here too.
• Done – a summary to check: school type, class, federal state, school year, time grid, subjects, grading scale and who sees the grades – at a glance. Here you can also have a task list “School …” created for you – for homework and revision; it then shows up as normal among your tasks. Only the “Set up school” button creates everything; until then, “Back” takes you to any step.

Siblings at the same school

If you're setting up a second child who goes to the same school, you don't need to type anything twice: the first step then has “Same school as a sibling?” – pick the child, and patchio takes over

• the school's name, type and federal state,
• the period grid, including breaks,
• the A/B weeks with their anchor Monday,
• and, if you like, the days off already recorded from today onwards (past ones stay untouched).

Deliberately not carried over: year, grading scale, grade visibility, school bag reminder, weekly briefing and a timetable subscription. Those belong to the child, not the school – siblings are never in the same class, and the sixth form uses a different grading scale than lower years.

What's carried over is a copy, not a link: in the following steps you're free to change whatever's different for this child, and afterwards each school profile stands on its own. If you change one child's period grid next year, the other one is unaffected.

You never have to maintain school holidays twice, by the way – those come from the school's federal state. More on this under “School holidays in the calendar”.

Changing something later

The assistant only runs while there's still a child without a school profile – once every child has one, it disappears. You don't need it to make changes, either: everything it asks about is afterwards under “Settings” at the top right of the School module.

• School – federal state, school type, class and the school's name.
• Grades – the grading scale. Grades already entered keep their existing scale; they aren't reinterpreted.
• Period grid – school start time, period length, breaks and A/B weeks. More on this under “Timetable, breaks & A/B weeks”.
• Days off – moveable days off and school-internal days that don't appear in any holiday calendar.
• Delete school profile – permanent, including subjects, timetable, dates and grades.

Who sees this? patchio only shows “Settings” to whoever can write for this child: everyone with the “Manage school” permission – and the child themselves, for their own profile. Only whoever has “Manage school” can delete it.

Why the region matters so much

School is a matter for the federal states, and you notice it in every detail. The same test is called “Schulaufgabe” in Bavaria and “Klassenarbeit” in North Rhine-Westphalia; the summer holidays start on a different date each year depending on the state; and how a report grade (Zeugnisnote) is built up from individual grades varies from state to state. That's why patchio asks for the school's federal state first, and sets everything else to match. It's all a suggestion you can change.

Several children

Each child has their own school profile. If you've set up more than one child, a bar of avatars appears at the top – tap one to switch between children. With a single child, this bar stays out of the way.

You add new children as usual, under Manage → Family. After that, a “+ Set up a child” button appears next to the avatars in the School module, taking you through the assistant again. It only shows up while there's really a child without a school profile – and only for people with the “Manage school” permission.