School trip, outing and parents' evening

Not everything coming up at school is an assessment. School trips (Klassenfahrt), residential trips, outings (Wandertag), day trips, project days, school and sports days, parents' evenings (Elternabend) and parent–teacher days (Elternsprechtag) go in as an event – in the same “Dates” tab, but with their own fields.

How to add one

In the School tab Dates, tap “Add date”. patchio first asks what it's going to be:

• Assessment – a test, Schulaufgabe, class test. With a subject, and later a grade.
• Event – everything else, including things spanning several days.

In the event dialogue, you choose the type (ten tiles, from “School trip” to “Other”), optionally give it a title (“Berlin”, “Bundesjugendspiele”), and enter the date range.

Study tasks, right when you add it

For an assessment with a date, the dialogue shows its own “Study tasks” section – both when adding it and later when editing it. Three suggestions are on offer: start a week before, revise three days before, go over it again the evening before. Whatever you tick becomes an ordinary task with a due date once you save, assigned to the child and placed in a task list (“School ‹first name›”, if you have one). The save button tells you upfront what will happen: “Save + 2 study tasks”.

If a suggestion already has a task – whether it was created the first time round or via the book icon in the list – its checkbox shows greyed out with “already created” and can't be ticked again. That way, the same study task never gets created twice, even if you open the assessment several times.

How far along you are shows right in the dates list: a third line, “2 of 3 study tasks done”, as soon as there are study tasks. The book icon next to it then shows the same state as a tooltip and changes colour.

From and to

To is always pre-filled with From. That makes a one-day outing a single click: pick the date, done. For a three-day school trip, you just set “To” to the last day. Underneath the fields, it shows what patchio makes of it – “3 days: 12–14/05/2026”.

The time

Under each date field sits a time field. Both are optional: leave them empty, and the event counts as all-day – just as it did before these fields existed. But a parents' evening at 19:30 isn't an all-day event, so now you can enter the time properly.

• Just the start is enough. Then it reads “from 19:30” everywhere. School letters usually don't give an end time anyway.
• An end time without a start doesn't work – “until 21:00” doesn't answer the one question that matters: when you need to be there. If you delete the start time, the end time goes with it.
• For a one-day event, the end time has to be after the start time.

For a multi-day event, the two times belong to the first and the last day, not to every day in between: the school trip starts Monday at 08:00 and ends Friday at 16:00 – Tuesday to Thursday are all-day. That's exactly how it appears in the calendar too: “from 08:00” on Monday, “until 16:00” on Friday, no time in between. The sentence under the fields tells you in advance what patchio will make of it.

If you choose a type that almost always has a time – parents' evening, parent–teacher day, concert, school fair, sports day – patchio suggests one for you. That's a suggestion for an empty field: anything you've already entered (or deliberately deleted) stays untouched, and for an existing event patchio doesn't fill in anything at all.

In the family calendar

Every event automatically appears in the family calendar, in the child's colour with their first name after it, e.g. “School trip: Berlin (first name)”. Multi-day events run as a continuous bar across their days – even across a change of month, with a small arrow at the edge. In the agenda, the event appears on every day of its range, with the span next to it, so on the second day you can see it's still going on.

If an event has a time, it appears at the front in the week view and the agenda (“19:30 · Parents' evening (first name)”). In the month view, it stays in the tooltip – the cell's too narrow there, and that's how normal events work too. Within a day, the same order applies as everywhere else in the calendar: all-day items first, then timed items by the clock.

Events sit on the same calendar toggle as assessments: in the calendar layers, it's called “School dates”.

Editing and deleting

In the dates list, assessments and events sit together in one timeline – “Coming up” for what's still ahead, “Past” for what's done. An ongoing school trip stays under “Coming up” until its last day. Tap a row to change it; the delete option sits at the bottom left of the dialogue.

Who can do this?

The same rule as the rest of the School module: adding, changing and deleting is for admins, members with the “Manage school” permission – and the child themselves, if they have their own profile. Seeing the events is open to every member of your household; they're family organisation, not sensitive data. Unlike grades, there's no separate visibility setting here.

Holidays?

For an event, patchio does not warn you if the date falls in the holidays – outings, activity weeks and holiday childcare happen exactly then, after all. That warning only appears for assessments.