School holidays compared across areas

Why school holiday dates differ

Nothing in England fixes a single holiday calendar. A council sets dates for the schools it maintains, and the schools it does not maintain — academies, free schools, foundation schools — decide for themselves. Two councils working from the same term lengths can still land on different weeks, because each one decides for itself how to arrange the year around Christmas, which falls on the same date every year, and Easter, which does not.

Easter is where that choice shows most clearly in the table above. The date of Easter itself moves every year, so a council has to decide whether the break wraps around the weekend or sits after it. One area in the table wraps its break around Easter while another places it afterwards, so holidays with the same name can start on different dates.

That is why this page compares rather than averages. There is no national school holiday calendar in England to report — only the particular calendar your council published, and the gap between it and the one next door.

Inset days can change the first day back

The dates here are the ones the councils publish. The day your child actually walks back through the gate can be later, because schools use training days — usually called inset days — and some of them sit at the start of a term. Those are set by the individual school rather than the council. Check your school's calendar for inset days and the first day pupils are expected back.

Two of the councils we use as sources set the year out in the same terms: 190 days in school for pupils, plus five days kept back for staff training. Birmingham gives the total as 195 days. That is how those councils describe their own year, not a figure we are reporting for every school in England. Either way the practical point stands — check your school's own calendar before you book anything around a term start.