The public are being encouraged to share their views on school holiday dates and in service days for the academic years 2026/27 to 2028/29 as a public consultation goes live.
This meets the requirement to maintain a three-year forward programme of holiday and term dates.The consultation can be found here and will run from Monday 6 January 2025 to Sunday 2 February 2025.
The aim is to set out the council’s proposal for the school holiday/closure dates for the next 3 years from 2025/26.
When reviewing the school holidays we have followed the following key principles:
- Alignment of holidays across all schools as much as possible whilst allowing some flexibility for individual local festivals
- Adding casual holidays and in-service days onto existing school closures
- Allowing a full two weeks at Christmas and Easter
- Creating consistency by always positioning the February holiday as the second full week in February, Easter holiday in the first two full weeks in April and the October holiday in the second full week of October
- If the Easter holiday does not cover Good Friday, we have added this in as a separate holiday date.
- Pupil entitlement is to 190 days of education per academic year
- Staff should have 5 in-service days per academic year
Councillor Julie Pirone, SBC’s Executive Member for Education, Youth Development and Lifelong Learning, said:
“We would encourage anyone who has an interest in school holiday dates especially parents, pupils, carers, staff, and parent councils to take the time to put forward their views and take part in this consultation. The views are extremely valuable to the education service in shaping holidays. We are very keen to hear as many views as possible from local communities.”
The results of the consultation will be communicated as soon as possible after the closing date, and the term dates published on the council’s website.