Hi Eibbed
You've had great advice already. For what it's worth this is a bit of our story.
My dd, nearly 7, has been skipped and has changed schools with the skip in place. Had we not changed schools I might have assessed the skip as a failure - at the first school there was little change in dd after the skip. She was still socially isolated, the work was still too easy and the problems we were seeing with her behaviour weren't resolved. Basically the school itself was a poor fit.
We moved across the city to an area and school that is more 'us' as a family. The school is a straight public school but is close to a university and has a lot of bright and gifted kids. Here the skip works well. Dd, 6.5 at the time, recently completed out of level and IQ testing which put her at a 5 grade level up achievement wise and >99.9% IQ wise. While she certainly isn't working at this level at school, with the skip and the bright cohort she has found herself in a situation where she is socially happy for now. Work-wise she could be skipped again, but for now we have a happy kid for the first time, so we're not pushing it.
Without the current skip she'd not cope; she's extremely social and her best friend is MG and almost exactly 2 years older than her, which is a good fit. She struggles with kids her own age. I don't think they'll skip her again at this school, but we have access to a secondary school which will likely skip her again.
None of it's perfect, but it is our least worst option (for now - I have become a big believer in planning, but realizing our plans will likely change as dd grows and new issues emerge). So I'd say make decisions based on what your son needs now and, if at all possible, have a few back up plans in case plan A doesn't work out (or simply to have some ideas of what is out there if things do change down the track). Keep an eye on the long term, but only insofar as you can reasonably foresee any issues that are LIKELY to arise from any given decision. I say 'likely' because I feel I can have no idea at this age whether a decision to skip now (that might look ideal) will cause a problem, say socially, in 5 years' time - so personally I disregard that kind of worry from my deliberation. By 'likely' I mean if it is foreseeable that skipping will likely mean a huge trade off for your family down the track (loss of income due to moving to an area that will accommodate a skip, pressure on another area that your child is invested in etc), then that's something to give genuine consideration to.
Good luck. It is a hard decision, but if the ingredients are right it can be a very successful one.
