The school holiday dates and in service days for the academic years 2026/27 to 2028/29 have been confirmed.
The consultation
This follows a period of public consultation held between 6 January and 2 February 2025, in line with the Council’s requirement to maintain a three-year forward programme of holiday and term dates.
A total of 1,361 responses were received to the consultation which was based on 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, this will be added as a separate holiday date
- Pupil entitlement is to include 190 days of education per academic year
- Staff should have five in-service days per academic year.
Councillor Julie Pirone, Executive Member for Education, Youth Development and Lifelong Learning
"We would like to thank all those who gave us their feedback, with all responses having been taken into consideration in our development of the school holiday and in service days for the next three years".