Victoria Bond is the founder of schoolguide.co.uk, a free online information resource for parents looking to find the best school for their child. Search 35,000+ schools in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by name, postcode or location and see all the official data clearly displayed in a single page

I recently saw a dog age calculator on BBC news. The device allows you to type in the number of ‘human years’ your dog has been alive, press calculate and – ta dah! – your dog’s true age is displayed in dog years.

As a mother who moved home with two young sons a few years ago, I’d like to see a similar calculator for Parent Move Years. It took me just under one year to identify the area we wanted to move to, find the house (via one hundred and one viewings and several heart-breaking unaccepted offers) and move. I was 38 at the time and I swear I looked more like 83 at the end of the process.

In fact, according to recent research by specialist conveyance lawyer site In-Deed (LINK: http://bit.ly/15PQhOx), the stress of moving house ages you by up to two years. Psychologists questioned two thousand house-movers and found that age-related symptoms including short-term memory and general anxiety was common.  They didn’t specifically question parents but, if they had, I suspect their figures might have been much higher.

We all know that moving house is high on the list of most stressful life experiences but add little people in to the mix and it we’re talking potentially off-the-scale levels of anxiety. Suddenly a house move not only involves large amounts of money, legal activity, planning – and no to mention the physical move – but you also have to think about nursery places, proximity to children’s friends and, crucially, schools.

A house is no longer just a house. It becomes “a house in close proximity to excellent local schools” or “a house within walking distance of the most sought-after secondary school in the city.” Priorities change; and there’s not a parent in the county who doesn’t put their child’s school first.

There are two products, however, that are can age-proof you in the process. One is an excellent property search agent. The best will “get you” and make you feel like you have been hand-picked for a prime time TV show and been given your very own Kirsty and Phil.  I had this feeling when I met Kate and Teresa from Goosechase Property Search. Calm, collected and with an encyclopaedic knowledge of their local area, they are like a pot of property crème de la mer; they have the ability to make the stress and move lines magically disappear.

My site, schoolguide.co.uk, can also take away the headache of searching for school information when you are looking at local options.  When I first moved toBathfromLondon, I had to do vast amounts of homework on local schools to get the information I needed. My local estate agent emailed me a list of schools and that was it. I had to go to several websites to get up to date information on the schools themselves. I went to Ofsted for inspection reports; then the Department of Education for performance tables. Once I had a picture of how a local school was performing, I had to Google the name to find a contact email addresses or telephone numbers. It was a lengthy process and definitely not one that I felt I had spare energy or headspace to do real justice to when also planning a house move.

Certainly I wish I’d had schoolguide.co.uk and school information at my fingertips when I’d moved. House movers and especially parent house movers need every single bit of help they can get. School Guide short-cuts one crucial aspect of moving and reduces the number of Parent Move Years that will get added at the end of the process.

I’m just sorry it can’t answer the next question many parents face from their children when they find their perfect home: ‘Mummy, can we get a dog?’

By Victoria Bond

Editor schoolguide.co.uk