Methodology

Dataset updated 4 November 2026.

Where the dates come from

There is no national dataset of UK school term dates. Roughly 208 local authorities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each publish their own term dates page for community and voluntary-controlled schools. We fetch each authority's own page, extract the dates it states, and check every date against the source before it is allowed to publish.

The accuracy check

A date only appears on this site if it is grounded: present in the official authority or school source, in that form or a clearly stated weekend adjustment of it. Extraction that cannot be grounded is refused rather than guessed. In this dataset, 196 authorities have a confirmed calendar for the current school year and a further 3 have a confirmed calendar for a future year but not yet the current one. The remaining authorities either have no confirmed calendar yet, or (for 4 authorities) publish no authority-wide calendar at all, which their page states plainly.

What an authority calendar does and does not cover

An authority calendar is the dates set by that authority for community and voluntary-controlled schools. Academies, foundation schools, voluntary aided schools and free schools are legally free to set their own term dates, and many differ from the local authority's pattern, particularly around INSET (staff training) days. Every authority page on this site carries this caveat. Where a school's own type means the authority calendar is not its calendar, the site says so rather than presenting a borrowed calendar as the school's own.

What v1 of this site does not do

This version covers authority-level pages, a set of national query pages for the most searched holiday and return-date questions, a home page search, and 19,300 England school-register pages. The pilot includes 3 school-specific calendars with official source links, pupil teaching periods and stated closures. Other schools retain the authority calendar or reference page with a link to their own website. A missing school-specific year is never filled with authority dates labelled as the school's own. Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland school pages await register and source-scope work.

Refresh

Live sources are checked for changes. A detected difference is reviewed against the source before any calendar is amended. Failed or incomplete reads do not replace retained evidence. The dataset update date is separate from each source's capture date.