Timing return home- school terms

[Harissaontoast]

We're due to finish our post and return home in the first half of this year. Originally this was supposed to be around Easter- but work agreed to extend me until end of June so we could finish up the school term (years 1 and 4). DP has told his work he will finish his career break at the start of July- and thinks (provided we get a place- we are basically next door to our old school so a reasonably good chance) we should put DC in school in the UK for the last 3 weeks of term. Which sort of defeats the object. He is absolutely desperate to get back to work, and is not mad keen on the country we're living in- and has done 2 long summers of childcare in a row.

I could take unpaid leave for a few weeks I guess but it's going to make for a VERY long summer and DC1 has ASD and is not very holiday club friendly.

I'm wondering now if we should come back at Easter as first planned to give them a full term- although it will make everything a mega rush now with movers and packers and the early part of the summer here is really quite nice. Work would be pretty flexible either way I think as my replacement is available whenever.

WWYD? We need to decide asap to give tenants and school notice.

If your children won’t cope with holiday club because its too much change, how do you expect them to cope with moving house, moving country, leaving their old school ( presumably they will never see their friends or teachers again ) , starting a new school, then taking 6 weeks holiday then going back to school?

And all because you and your partner between you can’t face looking after your own children for 8 weeks in a row.

Why can’t your partner just go back to work at the end of the school holidays ? It’s sounds like he’s only had to do two summers out of , what, nine years of having kids.

Is it a state or private school, if it's state it can take several weeks from application to starting even if there's a place. I think you need to revise your expectations

@gogohmm state, we're crown servants so it gets expedited a bit (we can apply early) but yes am very aware we may not get an instant place.

@EL0ISE I didn't say it would be too much change, they're delighted to be moving back. It's not been a very long stint. But the eldest doesn't do holiday clubs which limits childcare options- and like most parents we can't just take 8-9 weeks solid off. If we move back at the end of June, and we get offered a place legally they should be in school anyway for the last few weeks of term.

We came back, having finished the whole of Y3 and Y5, in June. Kids were in school 10th days after landing (not crown) and school would have taken them earlier, but I said I needed a week to get uniform. They finished the last month of Y3 and Y5 again.
I told the kids that I wasn't bothered about test results, I wanted them to find their way round the school, make some friends, work out how the school worked, and see if they had any big gaps they wanted to look at over the summer (UK georgraphy!).
It also gave me a chance to e.g. buy a car, without 2 assistants, and recover from an international move with DH still abroad.

IMO, it worked well. The Y5 has pretty much ditched any friends he made, but the Y3 is still in touch with one now they are at secondary.

I think it would be tough for you both to start/restart new jobs shortly before the summer holidays tho. Can one of you be off for the 6/7 weeks of the summer? Mind you that why we went abroad in the first place - 2 of us working full time was a nightmare for school holiday childcare - most stuff round is is 9-3, which is useless if you need to commute and work 8-4. I'm sill not back earning anywhere near my old salary, as we just couldn't make it work.

Don't assume that you'll get the school you want just because it's close by. There could well be waiting lists for places.

I was going to say this too. Your children may not even end up in the same school.

@ChristmasCakeAndStilton thanks that's super useful, and I had a look on 2 fat expats as well and there were a lot of proponents of this approach as a low key way of getting them back into school. Glad it worked out. Would definitely be useful to have some space to get some stuff sorted as well.

Holidays are a total pain. I think we'll box and Cox over the summer and my mum might be minded to do a stint. Luckily now they're out of the little kid stage they play on their own a bit and the youngest will do holiday club as well.

I know we might not get our preferred school- it's historically been a bit undersubscribed though and there are 4 or 5 other primaries close by we would be happy with too. The nightmare is at different schools. Luckily there is a lot of movement as well (inner London) so kids don't usually wait too long, if at all.

"We need to decide asap to give tenants and school notice."

I hate to add to your worries, but if you need tenants to move on, you may not get your house back quickly. The rental market is crazy at the moment. When mortgage rates went up this autumn, some overextended buy-to-let landlords decided to sell up. Others were worried about the noises the govt has been making about finally getting rid of no-fault evictions and about increasing the minimum EPC for rented houses. Though these changes may or may not come to pass, the bottom line is that fewer rented houses are available right now. Rent has shot up.

Many tenants live in fear of being given notice, because they can find nowhere to go. London is especially bad.

Our elder DD was out of school for half a term (two months) when we returned... and only won the appeal as she was a Military child. The whole process closes down over the summer holidays as well...

I would plan to move sooner so that there is definitely a parent not working for the first few weeks to cover eventualities

We moved back in June - they had finished the school term overseas but we put them into the local state school for 4 weeks just so they could get a bit familiar with it before the new academic year. They were both fine, it worked out well

If you give your tenants notice now, it's very unlikely that they will be out by Easter unless they find somewhere else easily.

Going back a bit but... we moved overseas when I was nine, and sibling and I started school two weeks before the end of term. As pp has said, I'm not sure we learnt much academically, but it meant we had orientated ourselves and made a couple of friends with whom to play in the summer holidays.

Regardless of timing, what would you do with DC for the summer holiday?

I would suggest you move at the end of June and then if you can, you take e.g. six weeks off before your family can step in with a bit of the childcare.

You also need some time to get the house set up, uniform purchased and so on.

Sorry, ignore my q about holiday care. I'd missed you last post and then forgot to delete the q once I'd read it.