I'm in a similar position, wanting to move to the UK with family aged 18, 16, 13 and 11. Probably for about 2 years or so.
School is therefore very important in our decision. In particular my 16 year old daughter is about to move into Year 11 in Australia (in January). In the UK she would have to do A levels and of course school starts in September. We are concerned about the gap between Australian HSC standard (6 or 7 subjects covered at general level) and A levels (2 or 3 subjects at specialised level). If anyone has any thoughts or especially experiences on this it would be good to hear from you.
Other questions:
* how do we find out where the good cheap schools are? Public schools here cost about 2x to 3x what they do in OZ so they're not cheap (even in Oz come to think of it). But we do have the luxury of moving anywhere we like - we are thinking about 1 hour out of London by mainline rail so can go anywhere in the Green Belt (though south east preferred).
* Looks like our kids have to miss out / repeat a year, especially if we then move back to Oz (school years end in June/December so another repeat for half a year. That means they will leave school 12 months later than planned?
Tax-wise I am informed that unless you give up Australian resident status for 2 years you will be taxed at top marginal rate (47.5%) on UK income, but can claim relief for UK tax paid. This is pretty ruthless of the ATO but may not affect me anyway.
London seems surprisingly cheap for things like eating out, shopping, compared with Oz, the food has improved out of sight, as has the coffee.
The rail system everyone gives out about, but it's great, and a very viable alternative to flying.
