Recently I moved home with my kids, so I wanted to share my thoughts and experience with you. The keyword of my blog post title is ‘home’. I didn’t write house, or flat, because ‘home’ is not material, it is a psychological conception of belonging. 

The idea of ‘home’ is important to all of us but for children home is rooted to their literal and psychological sense of safety. Home is (hopefully) the place where they can be who they are, it is their space of love, support, and self-discovery. 

‘Home’ is bound intrinsically to a child’s sense of identity.

​Home is the place in which children develop their environmental attachments. A parent or caregiver has only to think of the time they did a big clean of their living space, decluttered, reorganised objects and perhaps furniture, and then excitedly brought their children home from nursery or school only to be met with a child’s distress as things were not in the right place, or a child’s outrage and incredulity that it looked completely different and was no longer ‘home’.

Oh, my goodness this is such a hot topic in parenting groups, isn’t it?! I know parents (me included!) can feel really anxious about the idea of kids having to change school because of a home move. 

Different countries have different processes for applying for school places. I live in England and even within areas of England there are slight differences so there’s no way I can cover all school admission processes across the globe in one blog post! Sorry! 
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However, what I am going to do is give you some top tips for navigating the schools admissions process when moving home within England (and applying for state schools), and hopefully these steps are useful more widely too.