Aibu to move my DS school and away from friends?

[Micemice]

DS is 6yrs Old and attends a very local school ( walkable 5 mins). He is in year two and after a rocky first year settling in now enjoys it- loves his teacher and lots of lovely friends. Sees some of his school friends after school/ weekends and some attend the same after school care he attends part time.
We tried to move house to another local house 2 years ago but fell through and never happened, where we live is a very popular area and in the last two years of searching very little has come up, and anything suitable that comes up is now way passed our budget! Considering starting to look at houses in a nearby town-10/15 min drive, more affordable town. This would mean DS moving to a new school, daycare and uproot him from his very settled life. Some friends and family have very strong ( negative) opinions that we’d even consider moving areas as they think it would be devastating for 6yr old DS.

so what’s your thoughts/ experience?

yabu - stay where you are , in your small house in a good location close to current school.
yanbu- move to new town, bigger house DS will manage and adapt!

You wouldn’t have to move your son, 10-15 mins drive is nothing for school run, although does assume you have a car / can drive

Why are you moving? I think you missed that detail.

I probably wouldn’t move if you have at least two beds.

However, as PP said, why would he have to change schools? Is it because it’s a faith school and you have to live in the parish?

Once you’ve got the place the school can’t force you to leave if you move outside catchment area

He's 6, I think 6 yr olds tend to move on fairly quickly.

If it took him a year to settle there is no way I would now be moving him to another school. I think it would be such a shame to move him away from where he is really happy.

Are you willing to stay until he’s done with secondary education at 18? Because it doesn’t get easier to move them the older they get, quite the opposite. If you want to move then at six most kids make friends fairly quickly and most kids are reasonably welcoming to new children.

I would move school though if you move house - even without the school run nightmare having all his friends and activities 15 minutes drive away is going to get really tedious plus he’s not going to know local kids for secondary.

It would depend on which high school your DS would move to, if the new school go to a different catchment high school I’d move him now.
If the schools both feed to the same high school then it’s 50/50 about moving, the ease of the school run, local friends etc

Why do you have to move school. Once you have a school place you do not have to change. I would get the bus if you don't drive. My child's happiness would come first without a doubt

Thanks for everyone’s thoughts, with traffic would be 20/25 mins away in the morning but usually 15min. Reasons for moving is just affordability of houses and we would be able to afford a bigger house than currently with more space for our children outside. Great point about the secondary school options - will consider this further for sure. My son is happy at school now but if we moved house we would move schools also given that we’d want him to have local friends too. My husband is struggling with the thought of moving to a new area/ town considering we’ve been here 15+ years! Will chat some more tonight and also with the vendors agent tomorrow, there’s a lot of interest in the house so wouldn’t even be guaranteed that we could buy it even if we wanted it!