Taking my 10 year old travelling for a year

[Carrieokie]

Hi there,
Does anyone know whether I can take my child out of school to travel for a year after she finishes year 6 and before she attends secondary school? Would they even accept her into school once we’re back?

thanks

How would she cope with missing all of y7 and going straight into y8. Academically, it may be a leap but socially it may be more difficult. What you see as an rxc

As an exciting opportunity may be awful for her.

She would have to go into year 8 (assuming a state school). Also when returning, you would have to take a place at a school with spaces, which may not be your favourite. However you definitely can do it if you want to.

Yes you can take her. In theory it sounds wonderful.
Are you planning to send her straight to secondary? If so then she is not going ‘back’ but to a new school. So that’s a different issue. Applications for secondary school in England have to be submitted by the end of October I think?? Are you planning to keep a residence in the area? If not you may struggle to apply for and get given a place in any school until you return.
Her primary school can not hold a place for her indefinitely.
It all depends on how important it is to you which school she attends when she returns as you may not get a lot of choice.
Have you thought how you will keep her up to speed with her maths and literacy before her transition secondary?

I'd be tempted to go for Y6, and come back to start Y7 with everyone else.

But, yes, you can leave for a year and then come back and request a school place. It is likely to be in a less popular school tho.

Thanks everyone, it’s a really tricky one as we will be returning to live in a completely different county. I would love her to be able to start back in year 7, particularly as she is the very youngest in her year ( dob 27 Aug) but I know this won’t be possible. Don’t really know who to speak to? Her primary school she’s at now? Our current local authority? The local authority of where we will be living when we return?
I do plan to keep up with some maths and plenty of reading along the way.

Having missed a lot of education in my childhood due to doing something very similar, there is a reason why my similar age sibling and I made sure that our kids had absolute stability at school.

It's hugely disruptive and the benefits don't outweigh the downsides. Far better to do it when they are older. Given the August birthday, why not take a year out between GCSE and A levels... they will remember it better for a start.

Under those circumstances, you won't be able to apply for an in-year school place in the new county until you have an address there, and most will require the child to already be in residence before they process an in-year application. So you would need to return, and then apply for a place - they cant keep a place for you whilst you travel.

There is a very small chance you might be able to negotiate her into year 7, depending on the school, but it would still be an in year application.

Given you need to apply for secondary soon, I would do so, to give yourself options.

I would wait until she's older.

Will you home school her while you are away? Surely if you do that she can just pick up where she left off.

What country are you going come back to ? Do you mean a different part of the U.K.? School systems are very local so you'll have to check with the place you will be coming back too.

I think you have to home-school her for a year, I don't believe that you can just opt out of school educating her without an alternative. I'm sure you could still ask the new school about repeating the year if they'd allow it. There are online schools she could join for the year, you wouldn't have to do it yourself if that's preferable.

I know if you were to leave mid-year you'd have to deregister her to avoid fines, homeschool in the interim and reregister her on your return so I presume similar applies for whole years.

If you plan on her going straight into Y8 when you return then be aware that you might not have any say in which school she goes to - it will be the one with places. Fine if you have a great undersubscribed school in mind, but a hard pill to swallow if she would have got a place at your first choice school at 11 but ends up at a school you really don’t want that’s 10 miles away from where you live.

If you are thinking of holding her back a year then most LAs will look for a reason why other than just her birthday. If she hasn’t struggled and doesn’t have any SEN and wasn’t born prematurely then they may well decline the request. I mean, why wait until now for it to be a “problem”?

You will find private schools far more accommodating.

It's a tricky call. This is not exactly the same but we took our two out for a year in year 2 and year 4- so much younger. The process was easy and they got back into the same school - but you have a different schooling issue with secondary.

In terms of the benefits - they are both late summer born and did not need to catch up when we got back (rather the reverse) and I think you could probably teach the year 7 curriculum absolutely fine to most children one on one in an hour a day - a lot of it is catch up.

In terms of family time - the year travelling was brilliant - made us closer as a family, and both girls learned a second language (to chatting standard, not fluent). They are resilient girls who are really happy to go into new situations (they did go to school overseas for a few months) and meet new people, and are not worried by setbacks, or when their parents don't know exactly what to do. They are thoroughly positive on the whole experience.

Of course, you have the secondary school place to worry about, but I think you usually regret the things you don't do, rather than the things you do - and if you plan this carefully she will be fine. Children join schools in Year 8 all the time, and flourish...