Informing school of changes

[InaPuckle]

Taking DS out of school to go to NZ for 9 months. I tried emailing LEA to ask what I need to do but no response, tried phoning and was told the Home Schooling Team were probably the ones I needed to talk to and that they would call me back, they didn't. Called again and was told I need to ask permission from school but I thought permission was only required for term time holidays and not for withdrawing a child!

I can find information on withdrawing a child for Home Education and that states that you write a letter to say you have withdrawn the child and then they inform LEA and take it up from there. I want to confirm my decision to withdraw DS before actually doing it as we will be out of the country and not recieve any correspondence.

Do I just write a letter stating our intentions and giving a withdrawl date? DS will start school in NZ, planning to start him in February, prior to that it will be HE of a sort with a lot of travelling.

I don't know the answer to your question - your head teacher will know though?

It sounds like you are planning to come back again to the UK, will you hope to get him into the same school again?

I don't like the school that much so ideally would prefer to go somewhere else on return but could also settle for the same school as would also have continuity for DS.

I'm just surprised it's not easier to get a straight forward answer from the LEA as this is a very transient area. I guess a lot of people just leave and never come back without bothering to inform anyone.

I would simply advise them that your DC will be leaving on [date] because you are relocating to NZ. They have no reason to whatsoever to monitor the education of children abroad, nor is there any reason for you to inform them of overseas educational provision.

We just sent a letter to school dating x date was her last day as we were moving overseas. Easy

Hi, I think if your Ds is leaving the school then just write a letter to head of school saying we are leaving the country so Ds last day will be x date. Then speak to individual teachers. This is what we did when we left.
I think if your child leaves to school because you are moving then you will have to reapply for a school place on your return in any case.
I'm guessing it's no different from someone moving from say Bristol to Oxford.
New Zealand sounds amazing!

Thanks everyone. Somehow I thought the LEA would be more helpful but I got the impression that the person I spoke to wasn't really paying attention. Didn't want to tell school too soon and wanted to ask also about what to do when we come back so I thought they'd be the ones to contact.

I had a problem turning down a secondary school place as we know longer needed it. I didnt want to withdraw from the process until we had visas and flights booked. That meant we the container had already gone when school place arrived. It took all of that final week to do the right thing and turn it down.

For the younger one we just told them as soon as we booked flights when she would be leaving