What we can verify

Academic year 2026/27

Every school on this site gets holiday dates. Not all of them get their own holiday dates, and the difference matters if you’re about to book flights against them. Here is exactly where the line falls.

19,093schools in the 114 local authorities whose published term dates we hold, read from each council’s own page, last on 5 September 2026
263independent schools whose own term-date pages we read, last on 6 September 2026
25,936schools listed in total, from the Department for Education register

So roughly 73% of schools sit in an authority whose own dates we hold. For everyone else we show the pattern most of England follows, and we label it as an estimate on the page rather than presenting it as fact.

Councils we hold

Read from each council’s own published page, with the source linked next to the dates. Every date arrives with the sentence it was read from, and that sentence is checked against the page before the date is kept – so these are quotations, not guesses. A council whose page we couldn’t read stays on the national pattern below rather than being filled in.

Where we fall back

The 39 English authorities not listed above. Dates come from the national pattern. It is right far more often than not, and it is not your school’s calendar. Some of these councils put their calendar behind a bot check, which we do not try to get past.

Wales. Not covered yet. Welsh schools are shown the English pattern, which Wales does not follow - treat those dates as a placeholder.

Scotland and Northern Ireland. Not covered. Scottish holidays differ materially - summer runs from late June - so treat anything we show as a placeholder.

Independent schools we can’t read. These set their own dates and rarely match the council: of the London independents we can read, not one follows the state October half term and most break for a fortnight. Where we haven’t got a school’s own page we say so in bold, on the page, before any price.

Summer, for most independent schools. A school’s summer holiday ends when its next year begins, and most only publish one year at a time. Where a school has published September 2027 we hold the whole summer; for the rest, the longest and most expensive trip of the year is on a fallback.

How to check

Every school you add shows where its dates came from and links to the source, so you can confirm it in one click. If a date is wrong, tell us and we’ll fix it for everyone at that school.