Does anyone know the process of how to register your kids for school when coming from US to UK?
First you'll need a UK address where you will be living, then you can start contacting the schools in the area to find out if they have any available places (some schools are oversubscribed and have waiting lists). I think you may need to make a general application to the local council for a school place rather than applying to the schools themselves.
Unlike in the US, you are not guaranteed to get your child into a school in the local area, so depending on where there are available places, you may have to send them to a school a little bit further away or a school that isn't your first choice.
This link might have some useful information:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Schoolslearninganddevelopment/ChoosingASchool/DG_10038421Individual local councils will have more specific information about how to apply for schools in their area though.
I'm going to get a copy of their vaccinations from the docs before I go over but that's as far as my thought process goes.
I don't think that vaccination records are required by UK schools (although that may depend on the school) - at least I haven't heard of it, but it's been over 20 years since I started school in the UK, so maybe someone else can clarify with more up-to-date info.
We should be arriving around the first week of April and I was hoping I could register them over the break and then they would start school...is it that easy?
As I said, it's going to depend on whether or not the schools have places for your children - you'll need to find this out from the local authority/schools themselves and I think you'll need to apply to the council to get them into a school.
Plus how long do you have to be in UK before qualify for medical. Both myself and kids are dual citizens,
I believe that as long as you are intending to live in the UK permanently/long term you and your kids will qualify from the day you arrive in the UK.
My kids are 7 and 11 and I have no idea what grade they will be in, plus we kept our son back a grade as he has dyslexia and ADHD so he is currently in 5th grade in US.
Going by ages alone (which is what UK schools usually do), if your youngest was 6 at the beginning of the school year, then they should be in Year 3 in the UK (2nd grade in the US?), or if they were 7 at the beginning of the school they should be in Year 4 (3rd grade in the US?).
In the UK, I think 5th Grade is equivalent to Year 6, which is the last year of UK primary school, but it sounds like going by his age, he would have been in 6th grade (Year 7) which is the first year of UK secondary/high school. I think it would be best to determine with the local schools whether or not he should be in primary or secondary school - as you will be arriving 2/3 of the way through the school year, it might be a case of him to going into Year 6 now and then starting secondary school in September.