House sale fallen through - what to do about school places in new burough?

[LaughedAtInMyPants]

A week before exchange and our sodding buyers pulled out. So our best laid plans of moving mid August and having 2 weeks to settle our DSs into a new house before tackling starting a new school have gone down the toilet. I'm utterly devastated of course but the one good thing in all of this is that the DSs had already been offered a place at the same school when we move to the new burough (70 miles away) which I think is almost unheard of.

We decided to plough on with the move and found new buyers quickly (taking a massive hit on price) and always hoped we would have exchanged before the start of term in Sept. This would have given us some security before completely giving up their current school places. We have asked the head of their present school to hold their places open until we confirm exchange and this has so far been OK. I don't quite know how we've managed to do it or if we'll get into trouble but we seem to have places in both buroughs on hold at the moment...

We've heard today that we have no chance of exchange before term starts and I need some advice. What the heck would you do in my position? If I contact the new school to tell them will there be a problem because they only offered us places based on our new address which we wont be in until mid Sept?? The current plan is for me to stay with parents (shudder) who live locally so the DSs can start at the beginning of term. Do we even give up our current school places if we haven't exchanged? I'd hate to start them at the new school and something falls through with our sale again.... I realise it's unfair to hold places until this late stage but I can't bring myself to take any action without being aware of the repercussions.

Feel like I'm going completely bonkers with worry. My poor youngest DS (about to go into Yr 1) has enormous anxiety about school and 'separation issues'. This is basically a polite way of saying that he woke at 6am every single day of school last year and continued to scream and sob until the school gates where he would cling to my leg until being pretty much dragged into the classroom. Every. Day. It breaks my heart to know that he's going to go through the upheaval of not living at 'home' on top of starting at a new school. This is my first post and I'm desperate for your advice!

This is really difficult for you and I can understand your caution.
The school your children are in presently cannot just cut you off, they have to be officially told by you that they are leaving / left. In fact in many LAs they do not take them off the official school register until they know exactly where the pupil has gone in terms of new school (this is to improve child protection ). They are supposed to report pupils to social services that just go off the radar without any knowledge of where they have gone
What the new school will say about not starting at the beginning of September is impossible to know without asking the question. But both schools will be anxious to get it resolved one way or the other because funding for pupils is based on a head count taken in October and you certainly should not be on two schools registers at that time.

My feeling is that you have to take a deep breath and go for it on the basis that the house sale / purchase will go through and start the kids at the new school.

Can't thank you enough for your rational perspective. Have been going into headless chicken mode today and it has helped enormously to have another opinion. So it looks like I need to be upfront and contact the new school. Just dreading that they might withdraw the offer on the grounds that we don't yet live in the burough at the start of term?

They have agreed a places for your children, so as long as you are upfront with them they should be OK about it. I presume that the school agreed for your children to start at the beginning of September and that is what they will be expecting. They might stretch them starting a bit but that is up to the school.
As far as withdrawing the place because you are not in borough, that is possibly not an issue because the school has to offer a place if it is available if requested no matter where you live in the country. The problem is if the school accepted the new address and because of the address you were top of the waiting list and were given a place, which others did not get. The school and others on the waiting list will quite rightly be miffed that you have not moved as you agreed. They will probably accept that the purchase is still going through but a solicitors letter confirming a new date of completion and move might be sensible.
The alternative, which I do not recommend, is to say nothing currently to the school, take the plunge and move to parents house and start them at the school on first day of term. Then when they have started tell the school that there has been a short delay in moving into the new house and that you are currently living with parents.

I had a very similar dilemma last year with my four children. We had a buyer for our house and had an offer accepted on a house in catchment for a great primary school. Eventually we were offered four places at the school we wanted (never thought we'd get all four in together), and all was well until we had to pull out of the house purchase because of a diabolical structural survey. I knew if we didn't take the school places, we'd never get them lined up like that again, and thankfully we still had a buyer for our house - but I knew they could pull out or anything could still go wrong up to the point of exchanging contracts. My four were very well settled in their old school, which was a great place. I was honest with the head teacher there, and asked her advice. She was very helpful, and suggested that I take the places we'd been offered and move the children - even though technically we didn't have a permanent home there. The risk was that we moved the children, lost our buyers and ended up with a forty minute commute to get the children to their new school. Like you, I had to move, with my four children, into my mum's two bed roomed apartment - but I could register with her address at the school as she lives in the same area so thankfully that wasn't a problem. We decided to take the plunge, and the children started the new school after the October half term holiday. We lived with my mum until a rental property became available in the area at the end of November, and we took that on even though our house sale STILL hadn't gone through! Risky. Thankfully the sale of our house did go through just before Christmas. We stayed in the rental for six months and recently bought a house in the area around the new school. It was super stressful, but for us, with four children, we knew it was now or never with the new school places. The old school were very patient, and didn't inform the local authority until we had definitely decided to go.

We are moving into rented for this exact reason so we weren't dependent on buying & selling. If you can move in with your Mum do that, that is your current address, start them at the new school in Sept - it will hopefully only be for 6 weeks until you get your new house.