Would really appreciate some advice - or indeed to be told it'll all be fine!
My children are in-between schools due to house move and lockdown coinciding.
The boring detail: Our house sale fell through four times last year :-(
We had hoped to move and start our youngest DCs at a new school in September 2019 when they started secondary.
Instead they had to start at the secondary our older DS13 was at - School 'A'.
They are currently in Y7 and 9. Due to our Older DS having SEN and problems socialising and school 'A' being over an hour across London away, this school was already not ideal. We thought that would be ok because we would be moving soon....
Cut to Jan and the third failed sale attempt. DTs were really hating the new school, made no friends, various bullying issues and really really unhappy.
Area school 'A' in was quite violent and kids weren't allowed to hang out anywhere near after school, lots of warnings to kids about stabbings and gangs, these things became realler and realler to us as our oldest was bullied by older boys.., school were not able to guarantee his safety anymore and only able to repeatedly isolate the perpetrators. Still no sale and no idea what might happen.
So: we moved school to school 'B' - nearer to us but less good - in fact 'requires improvement' - but friendly enough and in a safer part of town they knew well.
Lo and behold a few weeks later our house under offer and we were able to buy our dream home we had wanted for three years (yay!
).
Investigation led me to school 'C'. School 'C' is a 15 min school bus ride from our new house, the DCs went to look round, we all liked it, met admissions lady, filled out all forms, sent on all reports and info. DS1 chose his options for Y10, they were approved.
When we moved into our new house on 16th March we arranged enrolment proper. Yes they had places, would the DC come and meet the head, and do some tests to get what level they are on? I told school 'B' they were leaving immediately.
Of course on the day this was to happen they announced the schools would close the next day (18th March). No enrolment. no date for enrolment. Lockdown.
April I contacted school to see if they could enrol the DCs remotely, maybe they could access the online learning, see who their classmates would be - who lives in our village etc? Nope, Head says no enrolment until after lockdown.
Today I've mailed admissions lady again. No luck - paperwork all done, she 'can't see any problem' with their places, but - no enrolment until school starts in Sept, and she can't set them up on the system 'until I go back so they might miss the first week or so of term, but that wont matter, everything is so up in the air theres going to be so much to sort out in those first few weeks of term.'
I am so fed up and the DCs are really fed up too. They love the new house, but they have moved straight into lockdown and know nobody. They won't even be able to start on the first day. But actually - who will? I guess everyone won't start on the same day in any case?
I am home schooling them myself (almost impossible to get ADHD DC1 to engage), although school 'B' has said they can do their lessons. Understandably the DCs are 100% heels in the ground 'NO' about engaging with the school they spent three weeks at in January. As far as they are concerned they are 50 miles away and they will never go back. To be fair I am with them, but this leaves us in a massive real and psychological limbo. I am hesitant to press school 'C' further in case they just say 'no'
Help!