DD possibly moving to new school - hand holding please?

[Marushka82]

I posted this on the local site but haven't had any responses so I thought I'd try a wider forum :)
We had an offer on a house accepted recently and will be moving to a small village (hopefully before the start of a school year, but this depends on when we exchange contracts as apparently this is what admissions need to do a transfer). My DD is due to start Reception this year. The village primary is oversubscribed and they have a waiting list already (but advised me to keep checking as things might change) but a school in the next village (about 5-7 min drive) has spaces available so we will most likely move our DD there.

I was really hoping that we'd have a school around the corner but it seems like it wasn't meant to be. Do any of you have experiences of your kids going to school not in their immediate neighbourhood? Does it impact on the social/after school life? Please tell me I'm worrying about nothing

It's all a bit nerveracking as I'm wondering how DD will cope with the change (moving house, school where kids may have known each other as they live in the same village, went to the nursery together etc) and also whether it's going to be confusing for her to go for 'Stay and play' at the school she's currently allocated but then start at a different school? I know children are resilient and at this age they just get on with it so perhaps a bit of a PFB syndrome on my part but would be great to hear other people's experiences! Thank you!

Whilst DD1 does go to the local village school, her close school friends live a good 15-20 minute walk away, so she doesn't play out with them after school. Her best after-school pals are our next door neighbours GD, who they mind after school/school holidays, and our other neighbours GD who visits her dad (who also lives there) at the weekend and in school holidays. Proximity seems to trump which school you go to, in my experience.

We did exactly this last year. Identical situation. We moved in after the start of the school year and couldn't get DD into village school. She's at a school about ten mins drive away and is very happy. She started around two months late and settled in very quickly. Lots of the other children already knew each other from the preschool but she hasn't had any problems making friends.

Only thing I would say is that you'll have to work harder to make a social life for her in your own village. Play date invitations at school don't come very often because we live out of the village she's at school in (most others live in it). So you'll have to make an effort to get to know parents with kids the same age as yours - through clubs etc is probably your best bet.

Good luck with it. It's not an ideal situation but it can be perfectly workable with some effort.

Thank you for the insight Passthecremeeggs! I have to say I was so focused on the school situation I haven't even thought about social life.
I just hope the community in our village is friendly and accepting of newcomers! We've been in our current town for just over three years and it took some time to get to know people (it was made harder by the fact that I'm working full time and don't get the opportunity to go to baby groups. We are planning a second baby at some stage so I'll definitely try to be out and about as much as possible :)

Can give two angles to this.

Originally our DC didn't get into the local school and theirs was a 20 min drive away/hour by public transport. Not far distance-wise but just involved really roundabout ways of getting there. Never had an impact on friends. We played in the park then went home, or they played in each other's houses.

Then we moved to a small village, teeny-tiny. Ours go to the school which is only over the road but children come from a wide area to us. Again, no impact on after school life that I've noticed.

As for the DCs, they love it!

Changebags thank you so much! This is really reassuring! I'm hoping that with many villages around there will be no shortage of new friends (and luckily now have a car as well so getting around is so much easier!)