Taking child out of school due to house purchase delay

[Snugmummy]

Hello! We sold our house around 10 weeks ago and have been renting an air b&b until our new house is finished. Due to a variety of reasons the new house has been delayed & we need to vacate our rented house in 2 days!
Our builder has today informed us that the solicitor is still waiting on 1 form from the insurer and it could take as long as 5 days! We then need the funds released from our mortgage company, so god knows how long that will take!
anyway, I’m rambling! We need to stay at a relatives until we can move into our new house, but it’s too far away to take my DD to school every day. Does anyone have any experience with how the school will deal with this? I’m hoping to home school her in the interim.

If your child is going back to the same school, you'd hope that they'd approve the absence as other exceptional circumstances. Ask nicely and make sure it is realistic that you can't get them to school (ie more than an hour away?!). If they're moving to a new school when you've moved house, then they are leaving their old school as of now so it shouldn't matter anyway.

So your child will be off for five days?

It makes more sense to talk to her school. They know you, and her.

Yes , she’s staying at the same school as the new house is in the same town. I’m really hoping it’s only for 4-5 days but I’ll have a chat with the headmaster tomorrow- thanks for replying

How stressful! The HT will be able to think of a suitable solution, like marking dd as educated off-site for those days or something. I hope all gets sorted easily, massive headache. Best wishes.

How old is the child? Under about 8/9 I wouldn't even bother with the home schooling for the sake of 5 days.

I'm an attendance officer on a high school. This would just be marked as C code with us, "other authorised circumstances". Used for genuine crises etc.

Talk to her head of year or whatever, or find out if her school has an attendance person

Some local authorities may allow a flexi-school agreement, which is a formal agreement that you are taking responsibility for her education at home for a specific period of time. It may be coded as present or an authorised absence depending on how school draw up the paperwork.

Most schools will just code it as an authorised absence.

If your child is out of area for over a month then the school can consider removing your child from their register, but this is very rare.

Depends also on the distance as to whether they consider it reasonable for you to bring her daily or potentially some days - 45 mins - hour each way you would probably not be given leave whereas 2 hours each way you would

She’s only 7, and no issues with attendance until now. Our relatives home is an hour away. My husband thinks it’s not a problem and she’ll hardly be missing much at this age but I’m getting myself worked up about it- the house moving ongoing stress isn’t helping!
hopefully it’ll be sorted out tomorrow & I’ll stop worrying

I work in a school. We currently have someone at school in a similar situation and its unauthorised, as its not a reasonable explanation for them not to be in school.

Can I ask what the consequences are spongebunnyfatpants?

I have experienced this with my DS (who was 6 at the time). We were moving over 150 miles away, rental needed to be vacated and house purchase had been delayed by 1-2 weeks.
I had to move in with a relative who was halfway between both. I couldn't take DS to current (old) school as we would be 90 miles away, and DS also couldn't start new school as we were 60 miles away from that too.
Headteacher of old school confirmed that DS remained a student there until starting at the new school so the matter fell with them.
Headteacher said they totally understood the predicament and that DS would go down as an unauthorised absence. It wasn't an issue and nothing happened, HT said it would only have been a bigger issue had my DS hit a certain threshold of absence, which in their case was about 10% of the academic year (approx. 19 days). Hope all goes well OP, it's such a worry amidst all of the house moving stress too isn't it. x

I should have said that this was only in the last 9 months, so fairly recent. x

Thanks! I’m such a worrier anyway- we keep saying we’ll laugh about this in a few months

It'll be fine, if they were right enough to code as pure unauthorised as against the c code I mentioned above, the worst that would happen would be that they refer to council for a truancy penalty notice (fine). The council may well decide not to fine given that your reason for her not being there is valid, and she previously has good attendance.

If they do fine, you then either appeal or pay, but given the cost of fuel it is probably cheaper to pay than to drive there and back each day!

Tight enough, not right enough

If they don't approve the absence you could get fined. If you ring in and say she had covid but is well in herself and could you have some work to do with her at home it will go down as sick.

I know it's lying but it would be better than being fined.

While I appreciate it’s not ideal, you could actually take her to school even though it’s an hour away (assuming you have a car). There are many school children who actually live an hour from the school they go to every day.

Personally, I would take her in if at all possible.

Don't talk to the head there's absolutely no point, it's just ballache for them, you'll have to fill in a request form they have to consider it, almost definitely reject it as it isn't in the grounds to accept under the suggested framework, then justify a choice over if to refer to the borough or not and send a letter back to you to explain, no one wants to deal with that, not the office staff and not the head. You'd only get a fine, it's per parent about £60 per parent. It's not worth the agro for the school. So if they say no what are you going to do, you can't realistically get in. Schools are winding down now anyway. Just call in unwell for the week, stomach bug and take the time you need.

I do have a car, and if it was delayed longer than a week then I would have to do the drive, but I work from home and the time out would be difficult, not to mention the fuel costs.

Once you get to 5 days you will be fined. The fine is per parent per child.

The days don't have to be consecutive, so if you've already had an unauthorised absence in the last 3 months and these days take you to 5 or over then you will also be fined.

If absent for 5 days in a row in our area it is referred to the council and a fine is issued. It's £60 per parent for each child, so would be £120.00.

Please don't lie to the school, it not fair on your child, because they will tell someone, they always do. 😉

Take her in one day, have the other 4 off and you won't get fined, ballache but doable. You can even then say to HT we tried it on Monday but it's just not possible for me to get to work and it took much longer than expected due to traffic etc