SEN school and buying a house

[Mamma364747]

I'm not sure whether to put this in SEN chat but I'm looking for more traffic and a wider range of suggestions.

We're looking for a SEN school for 7yo DC. There are none centrally, they're all on the outskirts of the county, and a handful of prospective ones outside. We probably won't know which school until next year, but there's a small chance of a place in one school in autumn.

We're also renting a house that is not central, lease is up in the autumn. We own a tiny flat that we're currently renting out and are going to sell so we can be cash buyers for a house.

My head is exploding at all the possible permutations. We really want to buy a house and feel settled for DS' sake. Ideally this will be near the SEN school - otherwise LA would cover transport but it's not ideal.

Do we:

1. Stay where we are, renew the lease (ideally with a break clause) until school is decided. Put DS on school transport for 6 months/a year until we can rent or buy near his school.

2. If we get the school in the autumn, don't renew the lease, rent/buy near the SEN school in the autumn. Moving house and school at the same time will be a lot of upheaval for DS.

3. Choose the house and area first, school nearby is a bonus. There's no guarantee that DS will actually settle into any SEN school, or he could settle now but that could change as he grows up and we may need to change school, or the school could change if the head changes etc. Also we get to do this all over again in 4 years time for secondary. Secondary may be on the opposite side of the county.

Lots and lots of parents recommend homeschooling, but I don't think it works for him. He needs more structure, teachers who know what they're doing, and an opportunity to get away from screens.

I am just so stressed thinking about what to do when so much is out of our control. As a family we have moved around a lot and we are desperate to buy a house and garden and settle down for a few years, but it seems so unlikely in the medium term.

And another complicating factor is that we have another baby on the way, due in the spring, likely to be a planned cesarean, so a 6 month extension on our tenancy is not great timing.

Any ideas or other things we haven't thought of would be so helpful.

I would focus on moving somewhere you like and can afford. One of my kids was in a resourced provision school from year R, but by end of year 2 she had to go back to mainstream. We tried to move to stay on catchment for the school she started at, but it's really not that easy, especially if you have more children. I have 3 dc , two go to different secondary schools and one is still in local primary. Things change with schools, it's hard to predict what will suit your child.

We had to use school transport for the resourced provision but they got used to it and it wasn't too bad.

Visit the special schools. They are all so very different in approach and atmosphere and one that looks best on paper for your DS may turn out to be completely unsuitable.

We moved house in shortly after DS2 got a special school place for secondary. LA were willing to fund transport from our current home to the closest two, as there was about 0.1 mile in it. One was very much an over my dead body option and in the opposite direction to the move we hoped to make (given that the transition process started almost a year before the new school year) and the other didn't have a suitable space for his very specific needs. The third school (actually my favourite by a long way for many reasons) was another 0.6 miles away from us and that is where he was awarded a place. This meant that i was committed to at least 4 hours a day taking him myself, via public transport (two buses each way) for the best part of a term but the morning after we moved, he had transport in place for him.

Ironically, the school that didn't have space is less than 10 minutes walk from where we live, now!