Family & School

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• School sweep runs weekdays · 7am and keeps the Family Board dashboard fresh. Weekday mornings — reads the school's email, files every date and every ask, ticks what the evidence shows is handled.
• Sunday look-ahead runs sundays · 6pm. Sunday evening — the week ahead, day by day, per child: what is on, what is due, what goes in the bag.
• What is captured lands in the School register dataset, which lives at Data/School Register in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Activities dataset, which lives at Data/Activities in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Term dates dataset, which lives at Data/Term Dates in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the School costs dataset, which lives at Data/School Costs in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Homework and reading dataset, which lives at Data/Homework in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Parents' evening questions dataset, which lives at Data/Parents Evening in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the School run dataset, which lives at Data/School Run in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Holiday clubs dataset, which lives at Data/Holiday Clubs in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the School contacts dataset, which lives at Data/School Contacts in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The Family Board dashboard reads from the dataset and shows, at a glance: this week · outstanding · recently handled · homework and reading · parents' evening questions · days to half-term · days to the end of term · school costs, on record · clubs & activities · the school run · what it has cost, by kind · holiday clubs · school contacts · how this board works · the children.

The wiring, in one breath: Rosemary holds School capture · School capture writes to School register · Letter reading writes to School register · School sweep writes to School register · School register shown by Family Board · Family Board kept fresh by School sweep · School sweep fills Term dates · School capture keeps Activities · School sweep keeps Activities · Rosemary holds Letter reading · Rosemary runs Sunday look-ahead · Rosemary holds Homework and reading · Rosemary holds Parents' evening prep · Rosemary holds School run and holidays · School capture writes to School costs · School capture keeps School contacts · Homework and reading writes to Homework and reading · Parents' evening prep writes to Parents' evening questions · School run and holidays writes to School run · School run and holidays keeps Holiday clubs · School sweep writes to Homework and reading · School sweep writes to School costs · School sweep writes to School contacts · School costs shown by Family Board · Homework and reading shown by Family Board · School run shown by Family Board · Holiday clubs shown by Family Board · School contacts shown by Family Board · Parents' evening questions shown by Family Board · Sunday look-ahead reads School run.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Let the weekday sweep do the reading; your job is the glance. Open Family Board with your coffee and read Outstanding before anything else — it is the honest signal of what still needs your hand, soonest first, with the child and the date on every line.
• Say it in passing and it is filed: "Alex needs a costume for Friday", "I've paid the trip", "Sam's football is Wednesdays now". School capture writes the row, ticks the one you handled, and with two children asks which — it never guesses.
• Photograph the letter from the book bag and hand it to Rosemary with a line saying whose it is. Letter reading files the slip, the money and the day exactly as printed, and leaves blank a date the letter never gave.
• Read the Sunday look-ahead on Sunday evening, not Monday morning: it lays the week out day by day per child — the deadlines, the clubs and what to bring, who has each leg of the school run, the homework due, what is already on the family calendar — and it is drawn only from the records, so a gap on the card is a gap in the register.
• Confirm the senders once and keep them true. The sweep reads only the addresses you named; when the school moves to a new platform or a club starts emailing, tell Rosemary and it is added by name — nothing is ever read on a guess.
• Say homework and reading when it is set, and tick it on the board when it is done. "Alex has spellings for Friday" and "Sam has to read four times this week" become rows on Homework and reading, due when you said; Rosemary keeps what was set and when, and nothing about how it went. Say "I've paid the trip, 14" and the 14 goes on School costs beside the tick, so the board can add up what school has cost, by kind and for one child. No amount said, no cost row: nothing is estimated.
• A few days before a parents' evening, ask Rosemary to get it ready. It asks what you want to ask, writes your questions down in your own words, and offers what the register shows is still open for that child. On the evening, press Parents' evening questions on the Family Board and take them a question at a time, with a note for what was said. The notes are yours: kept as you gave them and read back whole if you ask, never summarised, and never a view of your child.
• Tell Rosemary who takes whom where, once, and the school run is on the board and in the Sunday card: "I do drop-off Monday to Thursday, a neighbour has Sam on Wednesdays." For a school break, write down what you have found, and where it has got to: to book, booked, paid. Rosemary never books, never searches for a club or a childminder and never says a break needs cover; the look-ahead names what is planned only for a break that is near, and only if you wrote something down.
• Keep the two kits apart on purpose. What the school asks of you lives here; what a school report says about your child lives with Wren in Children & Milestones, kept whole. Rosemary will hand a report across and never summarise it.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, datasets and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• Which addresses count as the school — each confirmed or struck by name, and a new one added the day the school changes platform.
• How much warning you want before a deadline, and who handles payments — said once, remembered by the sweep.
• What never to file: the newsletter you skim, the fundraising round you have opted out of, a sender that is not really the school.
• When the sweep and the Sunday look-ahead run, or pausing either and keeping just the board.
• Who takes which child where, and on which days: said once, kept on the School run, and changed by saying so the day an arrangement stops.
• What you have found for each school break, and the day to book by: kept on Holiday clubs, and left empty if your family needs no cover.
• Which homework you tick yourself: the sweep files what a school message sets and never ticks it, and the list only ever says what was set and when.
• The registers themselves are yours to edit: a club that moved, a term date the school corrected, an item you have decided is not needed.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Adding the Kit offers the first sweep right away: connect your email and calendar on the same screen, start it with one tap, and watch it read back through this term's school messages — the trip letters, the forms, the payment requests, the dress-up days, the term dates — finding the school's own senders itself and filing every ask and every date against the child it names. The calendar is only read, to spot a clash. Prefer not to connect? Rosemary builds the registers with you by hand instead, starting from what 1Presence already knows (something you have mentioned before, a term-dates letter or a photo of a school letter in your files) and asking only for the gaps: the children, the term, the clubs and what is on the fridge.
2. When that first sweep finishes, Rosemary leaves a short note in your 1Presence inbox saying what it filed — how many items, for how many children — and invites two minutes together to confirm which senders are the school and which child is which, and to fill what email could not show: a letter that came home in the book bag, a message in the school's app, the term dates on its website. That conversation is where the children go on the shared register, by name, school and year group only; the sweep never adds one on its own. The same card offers to run the sweep within minutes of new mail from the senders it read, as well as on its schedule: one tap says yes, up to 24 extra runs a day, Gmail only for now.
3. Whatever is still blank waits on the Kit page with a way back to Rosemary, and Rosemary offers it once the next time you talk. Tell it a part does not apply to you (no regular clubs, say), or that you have finished setting up, and it stops asking.
4. From then on the sweep runs every weekday morning, reads only the senders you confirmed and only what is new, files homework a message sets, the amount a receipt prints and a contact a signature gives, only as printed, ticks what the evidence shows is handled, and raises a card only when something is due soon, a message could not be matched to a child, a date clashes, or, on a Monday, the coming term's dates are not on record yet (saying where schools publish them). On Sunday evening the look-ahead sends the week ahead; it stands down until the register has something on it.
5. Nothing here replies to a school, writes to your calendar, or says a word about how a child is doing — and the records are yours alone; sharing them with another parent or carer is not available yet.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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