I know a lot of folks have been asking for schools to be revamped, I was surprised that High School Years and/or Growing Together didn't really make any changes.
I like your ideas of revamping , unfortunately it'll be hard with the fact that we don't have pre-teens in the Sims 4 to have middle school. But I agree that the school options for kids (even with High School Years) is boring.
I would love if they brought back the boarding schools from The Sims 3 and private school from the Sims 2. Sims need more variety in their school options, for sure. Boarding Schools had 5 different types and your sim could be sent there and stay until they age up to the next age. They'd come back with skills in that specific areas so for example, children or teen sims sent to For Starch military school would come back with an advantage in the military/criminal/law enforcement careers and would have a special salute option. They could make boarding schools exclusive to children age sims (since we have active high schools in the Sims 4) and let us help them determine hat sort of
Private school allowed your sim to wear a special uniform and it allowed you to start teen careers at level 2 instead of 1. But no real benefit outside of that. If they wanted to revise this for the Sims 4, maybe having them get perks like more scholarships if they go to University, faster skill building in certain areas, special interactions to tell folks they got into private school, etc.
After school clubs were also more dynamic in the Sims 3. Children could do scouts or ballet; teens could choose between Art club, debate, drama, music, school newspaper, shop, sports, and study class. Teens could choose 2 out of the 8. I'd love to see this in the Sims 4; we did have cheer, football, chess or computers in the Sims 4 but it does very little. I'd love to have more options, higher skill building, the option of those being in the club giving you an advantage if you go to University. It was a missed opportunity like teens who do chess in HSY should get an advantage to join the Brainiacs at Foxsbury. Like if there was a debate club on the high school level, you'd have an advantage joining the Debate Guild for Britechester University. They could even update the game so that sims who do Cheer (if you have high school years) could automatically be rank 2 if they join the Britechester Spirit Corps or Foxbury Spirit Squad.
