Advice or experience on moving abroad for 3 months with my son and coming back to same school.

[aramaya12]

Hi..sorry for the long title.but has anyone moved their son from a UK school for 3 months while working abroad and have a place held in the same UK school he was in?
I'd be really interested in any experiance and advice if poss.x

The school is under no obligation to hold the place, so if it's a popular school you may be in trouble. How old us your son and why would you do this (for language learning for example?)

Hi Clary,
Thanks I will have a chat with the school here and find out if there is a length of time they would be willing to hold his place for.
We have a business there but are looking to eventually buy a home for the future it would be to discover a new culture and language primarily for my son.

If you take him off roll, they are under no obligation to have him back.

They won’t hold the place.

There are all sorts of rules about it. I work in a school where dc are coming and going all of the time. I think we take them off the roll after 20 days. We need the spaces for the incoming dc! And it makes the attendance statistics even worse than they already are. Mid eighties.

I’ve lived abroad and I was unable to get a school place for one of my dc when I came back. Anywhere in the entire county. It was an absolute nightmare but it’s not a common occurrence.

Like you say, you need to talk to your own school. Chances are it will be fine.

I don't think many schools would agree to holding a place.

Firstly it would throw their attendance records into panic mode.

Secondly it could block a place that another child might need desperately.

Thirdly, they would have no guarantee that you would return so could have been through my first and second points for no reason.

You would have to take the risk that there might not be any place in the current school for your child on return, or that there might not be a place in the same class, or that you could be offered a place in a school that you don't like or want if your current school is full, or that you might have to appeal for your old place back with no guarantee that you would win the appeal.

PS the year your child is in could also be crucial, will they miss SATs preparation, GCSE choices, three months of GCSE teaching....... All things that schools might be concerned about because they could change their data.

I would only think that a private school would hold places open if the parent continued to pay the termly fees.

Umm thanks for everyone's replys.
He's in his first year in secondary school.
I will research it well before.

In state schools that can't be done. If a pupil is taken off roll, then the place is available to a child that needs it.

Have you thought it, through? Missing a term seems highly disruptive and your son could end up quite behind.

Is the school over subscribed?

Afaik in a state school it isn’t up to the school, they can’t just keep places for absent pupils. You would have to re-apply and join the waiting list when you got back.

Which may be fine depending on how over subscribed, how mobile the population your area is, how far up the waiting list you would be etc.

If the school isn't full then there will still be a place for him when you get back.

However I don't think you should overestimate how much language he is going to learn in 3 months. Are you planning to put him in a local school where you're going? What will he do?

Actually, it absolutely is up to the school. They have three options - either to off roll him, or to authorise the absence, or to treat it as an unauthorised absence. In scenario 1, you lose the place. You could appeal when you return, and then it's up to the panel to decide whether the school acted reasonably. In scenario 2, you keep the place with no penalty. In scenario 3, you keep the place but may well be prosecuted for non attendance when you get back. In this situation, I think you'd be lucky to get scenario 2. The absence would hit the school's attendance figures, and will make the space unavailable for another child if the school is oversubscribed. In scenario 2 or 3, the school will want an agreed return date so that they can chuck you out if you don't come back when you say.

But if they off roll him and the school isn't full it's not an issue.

Yes, that's true, though it's a risk - do you know how full the school is, OP? In certain circumstances a school can refuse to readmit a child (probably not in this case). And be prepared for a bit of digging around by the LA, because your child would be referred to the children missing education team. Probably not a great deal they can do while you're overseas, but they will want to do a bit of due diligence. You could try withdrawing for home education, but the LA probably wouldn't accept that as they would have no way of establishing if you're providing a suitable education if you're not in the country.

Another thing that might happen , depending on when you leave, is that the school might take him off roll and not manage to fill the place for the counting day (the day when the number of pupils on roll are counted to calculate the school's per pupil income for the following year) . In that case if you got a place in the same school when you returned the school would not get any payment for your child.

Very annoying for them. They would rightly be annoyed, having a child needing to be caught up with three months worth of curriculum and no money to contribute! Ten kids missing counting day is a senior teachers salary.

Sounds pretty disruptive to me 🤷🏼‍♀️

Learning continues at such a pace at this stage of a child's education that three months, across 8/9 subjects, would be quite a challenge to catch up on for your DS, OP. Particularly in subjects like maths.

Aside the point about the school place, which three months would you take off? If you took off June, July & August, that will be massively less disruptive than taking off January, February and March. In fact, even taking off August, September and October would probably be less disruptive than going and coming back again during the same school year.