Grades that
actually matter
School in The Sims 4 is a rabbithole with one performance bar. Your Sim leaves, comes back, and a green arrow tells you how it went. Realistic School replaces that one bar with an actual academic record.
Start here
What this mod does
Per-subject grades. A real GPA. Homework that finally does something. A teacher who has an opinion of your kid. A class full of real Sims from your own save your child has to survive socially — and report cards that tell you exactly what's going on.
Everything happens around the school day you already have. Your Sims still catch the bus; what changes is that it now leaves a record, and that record follows them.
Start here
The gradebook
Every school-age Sim gets a proper record instead of one number.
Children
Reading, Writing, Math, Science, Social Studies, Art, PE
Teens
English, Math, Science, History, Foreign Language, Art & Music, PE
Real letter grades with a percentage behind each one — A+ down to F. You don't just see "B", you see 86.4% and know they're two points off a B+.
Those feed a 4.0 GPA. Hit 3.50 and they make the honor roll. Drop below 2.00 and they're on academic probation.
New students don't all start identical, so no two Sims have the same first report card.
Grades
How grades move
Every school day, each subject shifts based on what your Sim actually did:
- Turning up. Attendance is worth real marks, and skipping is the fastest way to fail.
- How they felt going in. Focused and Confident help most. Sad, Angry, Embarrassed and Tense hurt.
- Whether they slept and ate. A Sim sent to school exhausted and starving learns nothing.
- Their skills. Building a skill at home lifts the subject it belongs to — Logic feeds Math and Science, Writing feeds English, Fitness feeds PE, painting and instruments feed Art & Music.
- Homework. See below.
- How their teacher feels about them. A well-liked student gets the benefit of the doubt.
- How they're doing socially. The big one — see self-esteem.
A grade is something you hold, not something you bank
Grades settle where your Sim's routine keeps them. Doing the basics earns a solid B. An A takes an A-grade routine — and you can't coast on one: start at 95% and just doing homework will slide you to 88%.
| Four weeks of… | 1 wk | 2 wks | 3 wks | 4 wks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turning up + homework | B | B | B | B+ |
| Rested, focused, a parent helping | B+ | A− | A | A |
| Turning up, never doing homework | C+ | C | C− | D+ |
| Skipping school | D− | F | F | F |
| Going in exhausted and starving | C+ | C | C | C |
An Easy / Normal / Hard setting decides how hard the bad days bite.
Grades
Homework that finally matters
- Finishing it lifts every subject and builds a streak. A Sim who keeps it up is genuinely hard to fail.
- Skipping it piles up missing assignments. Three days in you'll hear about it, and it keeps dragging until they catch up.
- Helping them with it is worth more than letting them do it alone — and it builds the parent-child relationship at the same time.
Grades
Studying
Noticed a bad Math grade? Now you can do something about it. Click their homework or any computer, choose Study for School, and pick a subject.
They'll sit down and work for about two hours. It counts the time they actually spend at it, so pull them away early and the session doesn't stick. The subject they studied gains the most, and everything else creeps up a little too.
Studying helps, but it can't rescue you from neglect. One skipped day damages every subject at once; one study session repairs part of one. A Studying setting lets you make it gentler or stronger. Sims will also occasionally sit down with a bad subject on their own, so the ones you're not playing don't quietly fall apart.
People
Teachers
Every student has a teacher — one homeroom teacher for children, one per subject for teens. They never turn up on your lot or clutter your save, but they do have opinions.
- How much they like your Sim shifts with grades, attendance, homework and behaviour.
- Some of them play favourites. An unfair teacher swings much harder in both directions, and you'll see it in their comments: "Clearly a favourite." or "This teacher has picked a side."
Their comments come from your Sim's actual record, so they always say something true. A bright kid who never hands work in gets told exactly that.
People
Classmates
Your Sim's class is made up of real Sims who already live in your world — the mod never invents anyone. If your save is short on children, the class is small.
- Where they stand with your Sim, out of 100, shifting a little every day.
- What they become — best friend, friend, crush, rival, or bully. Nobody is assigned a role; it grows out of how things actually go.
- Which crowd they run with — the athletes, the art crowd, the academics, the popular kids, or nobody in particular. Sharing a crowd pulls Sims together.
Because they're real Sims, school friendships show up in the normal relationship panel. A classmate your Sim gets on with comes home already a friend — and if they move in or grow up alongside them later, that history is real.
The hard stuff
Bullying
Realistic, but never graphic. This is words and social standing, not violence.
Six things can happen: being left out, rumours, name-calling, cyberbullying, being made a joke of in class, and a teacher taking someone else's side.
Your Sim can be any of three people
The one it happens to
A moodlet, a real knock to their self-esteem, and their standing with whoever did it collapses.
The one doing it
A Sim with the wrong traits and a rough time at home can be the one starting it — and the mod tells you plainly. It costs them too: guilt, a reputation, and teachers who notice.
The one who watched
They saw it happen and said nothing. Smaller, but it sits with them.
How often it happens depends on how many classmates have turned on them, your intensity setting, and — unfairly, and deliberately — how low your Sim already is. A kid who feels worthless gets picked on more.
Gentle, Normal and Harsh change how often it happens and how hard it lands, never what kind of thing happens. And you can turn bullying off entirely while keeping the friendships, cliques and classmates.
The hard stuff
Self-esteem
Every student carries a quiet sense of how they're doing, and it's what ties the whole mod together.
What wears it down
- Being bullied
- Being the one who did it, or watching it happen
- Failing, skipping school, being held back
What builds it back
- Getting good at something — a new skill level, or turning a subject into an A
- Making a friend, and being liked by the class
- Talking to someone, and making the honor roll
One brilliant afternoon can't wipe out a bad month — the good days build up gradually.
Why it matters
This is a real chain, not flavour text. Small knocks barely register. Sustained bullying does — and here's what that looks like over two months, for a Sim who attends every day and does their homework every night. The only thing that changes is how their classmates treat them.
| Their situation | GPA | Average | Self-esteem |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bullying turned off | 3.30 | 88.6% | 70 |
| A friendly class | 3.30 | 88.6% | 69 |
| Two classmates against them | 3.30 | 88.2% | 67 |
| Four classmates against them | 3.00 | 85.7% | 42 |
| Four, on Gentle | 3.30 | 88.6% | 67 |
| Four, on Harsh | 2.00 | 74.2% | 26 |
| Four, with a parent they talk to | 3.30 | 88.1% | 55 |
A Sim doing everything right still loses a full letter grade to a hostile class. On Harsh it takes them from a comfortable B+ to academic probation.
When a kid genuinely stops coping you'll get told — "Not Coping With School" — so grades never collapse without you knowing why, while there's still time to step in. And self-esteem always creeps back toward steady, even while they're struggling, so a bad patch is never a dead end.
The hard stuff
Getting through it
- Talk About School — select your Sim, click whoever they should open up to. The strongest thing you can do.
- A friend steps in — a classmate who likes them sticks up for them, on their own.
- A teacher notices — one who likes your Sim eventually puts a stop to it.
- A parent goes into the school — the decisive one, below.
Parents
What parents can do
Attend a parent-teacher meeting
When there's a struggling student at home, you can go in and agree a plan. Teachers come on side, your Sim feels backed, and every subject gets a real lift for the next ten school days. You can't spam it — the plan has to run its course first.
Report a bully to the school
The one thing that makes a specific Sim stop for good. You go in about one classmate, the school comes down on them, and they never bother your child again.
- One trip deals with one classmate — three bullies means three trips.
- It sticks, even if your Sim gets held back into a new class.
- It won't end bullying forever. Someone else can still turn later — one conversation fixes a situation, not the world.
Clear out everyone who's turned on them and school genuinely goes back to normal.
Parents
Consequences
Nothing happens without warning first:
- A progress report when a subject drops below 70%
- An at-risk notice below 60%
- Academic probation when the GPA falls under 2.00
- A parent-teacher meeting — still time to turn it around
- Being held back — they fail the year and repeat it
The school year
A school year runs about twelve school days by default, and you can make it shorter or longer. Pass it and your Sim moves up a grade, gets new teachers, and the work gets harder.
Being held back
It never affects aging. Your Sim grows up on schedule. What a repeated year means is:
- They stay in the same grade — the report card says 4th grade again, and their class moves on without them.
- It hits hard, then eases — a heavy moodlet for a couple of days and a real knock to their confidence.
- The family takes it personally. An ambitious or snobbish parent is Let Down; everyone else is Worried About Them. Same news, different households.
- It stays on their record — the report card remembers it for good.
- They start high school behind. Repeat a year and they begin secondary school with lower marks than everyone else — a real handicap, but never one they can't climb out of.
- Nobody repeats more than twice in a row.
You can switch being held back off entirely.
Using it
The report card
Everything on it comes from your Sim's actual record:
- Every subject with its letter, percentage, and whether it's rising or falling since last time
- GPA, with an honor roll or academic probation banner
- Attendance, homework streak, and anything outstanding
- Which subjects are failing and which are slipping
- How they're doing socially — friends, who's giving them trouble, and anything that's happened lately
- Teacher comments about this particular kid
There's a quick School Status view too, and a Classmates list showing where everyone stands.
Using it
Settings
One menu entry opens a settings panel. Pick a row to change it and it reopens, so you can set several at once.
| Setting | Options |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | Easy / Normal / Hard |
| Can be held back | On / Off |
| Studying | Gentle / Normal / Strong |
| School year length | Short / Normal / Long |
| Bullying | On / Off |
| Bullying intensity | Gentle / Normal / Harsh |
| Notifications | All / Important / Minimal |
| Autonomy | On / Off |
| Grade level | Set which grade a student is in |
Everything saves with your game, per save file.
There are seventeen custom moodlets with their own artwork, and the mod works in every language the game supports.
Using it
Getting started
- Turn on script mods: Game Options → Other → Enable Custom Content and Mods, and Script Mods Allowed.
- Drop the whole RealisticSchool folder into your Mods folder.
- Fully restart the game — script mods only load at startup.
- School-age Sims in your household enrol automatically. Click one for the Realistic School menu, or click their homework or a computer to study.