In the US, it varies by school district and state (though it follows the same general pattern). Where I’m from, we got a 2-month summer vacation, 1 week Thanksgiving break, 2 week Winter Break (for Christmas and New Years), 1 week Ski week (February), and 1 week Spring Break (near easter). We got days off for, Labor Day, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Veterans Day (Nov. 11), Martin Luther King Day, and Memorial Day. I am wondering what days off you got in your country, as well as the breaks that are given.
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Depends to some extent on the region,and also the type of school (and your year in it).
Basically in Sicily the long vacation is in the summer.Most students get about 3-3.5 months off,June to mid September.
A couple of weeks at Christmas and New Year.A week or a bit less at Easter.
Then some other days during the year,depending which day they fall on.We don’t move public holidays,so you might be lucky or not.
We just had a day off last Tuesday (April 25th,Liberation Day)and schools were closed.Most also closed on the Monday,what we call a ‘ponte’..so students had a long weekend.
Well, it varies by country, and it might change from year to year.
From Romania, as my brother is still in school.
Vacations: around 3 month summer holiday (around 20-ish of June until 5th of September. University students have a different schedule, as some of them might have mandatory workforce insertion), 2-3 weeks of winter holiday, 1 or 0 weeks of inter-semester holiday (sometimes the semester is set to end at Christmas, sometimes it ends in February and they get another week off, can also be considered ski week), 1 week autumn holiday (for some reason they get one week off just after returning to school. Uni students don’t get this), 1 week of Easter holiday (Uni students do not get this, depending on Uni). As for other ‘off days’, Labour Day (1st of May), in case it’s not already falling on a vacation, 2nd and 3rd day of Easter, Union day (1st of December), St. Andrew’s Day (30th of November -usually done because people wanted more free time on 1st of Dec), Teacher’s day (somewhere in autumn/fall). They also get two weeks of ‘special schooling’ (Green week and ‘a different school’ week, where they basically go to school to do jackshit). And I think that’s about all
This is for Stockholm. Other municipalities might have their breaks on different weeks.
Summer break 2023 starts 13 June and the fall semester is from 21 August-21 December. With fall break week 44 (30 October-5 November).
Christmas break 22 December-8 January, then The 2024 spring semester is from 9 January-13 June with sports break week 9 (26 February-3 March) and Easter break week 14 (1–7 April).
Public holidays on International Workers’ Day (1 May), Ascension Day (9 May, moving) and National Day of Sweden (6 June).
Walpurgis Night 30 April might be a day, or half-day off and Friday after Ascension Day 10 May might also be.
In Germany you have off school for Easter (~ 2 weeks), Whitsun (~ 1 week), Summer (~ 6 weeks), autumn (~ 1 week), christmas (~ 2 weeks) and in some states winter (~ 1 week)
I spare you the single days off: In Germany, many public holidays (not only school holidays) aren’t regulated on federal level, but on state level. So the exact amount of days and which days are off when differ. There are some dates which are public holiday nationwide like the first of May, 3rd of Ocotober (Day of German Unity) or the 25th and 26th of December, but others vary vastly. Given how small the country is compared to the US (Germany is roughly equivalent to Montana’s size, just with 80+ million inhabitants) many cross a state border on the daily commute. So you have to keep in mind two schedules. Effectively, regarding the statewide days off you’re happy if you remember your own ones, nobody bothers remembering 16 states.
The schedule of summer holidays is a special thing though: We try to avoid that everyone has school holiday at the same time, so the exact schedule is agreed upon long before. So this year the first state will have summer holidays from 22.06.2023 – 04.08.2023, while the last state will have 27.07.2023 – 09.09.2023. The begin and end dates shift every year and the states take turns, so that in the long run all states start first and last. This way it’s easier for families to get hotels etc for vacation as not everyone needs the same days and the hotels in the popular tourist destinations profit as well as their high season lasts longer.
In Spain education is decentralised, the 17 autonomous communities/states that make up the country have different school calendars. That said, the common calendar would be as follows:
– The school year starts between 8 and 12 September and ends around 23 June
– July and August summer holidays
– 12 October, National Holiday
– 6 and 8 December, Constitution Day and Immaculate Conception Day (there is usually a long weekend, so it can be between 2 or 3 public holidays)
– 23 December to 7 or 8 January, Christmas holidays (6 January is the day of the Three Kings in Spain, which is the day on which gifts are traditionally given, not 25 December).
– Sometime between March and April, Easter week.
– 1 May, Labour Day
To this must be added
– 4 days of regional holidays,
– 2 days of local holidays
– 4 days of holidays that can be freely chosen by schools
In total about 120 days of holidays
We have a week off right now because there are various holidays every other day, 2 days off in June for some catholic holiday, 2 months vacation, 1 and 11 November, Christmas to new year but sometimes even to 6th January (another catholic holiday lol) at least at higher education. Then it’s 2 weeks winter break and then Easter
School vacations are no longer synchronized in Flanders and Wallonia (because education is the responsibility of the communities) so this only applies to Flanders:
The school year starts on September 1, or the first business day after that. The year ends on June 30 or the last business day before that. Classes in higher education tend to start three weeks later; those weeks are used for retake-exams for students that failed one or more exams in the previous academic year.
Vacations: autumn vacation (around November 1st), Armistice Day (November 11), Christmas vacation (two weeks), crocus vacation (one week at the end of February/early March), Easter vacation (two weeks), Labor day (May 1st), Ascension day (always on a Thursday) and the Friday after that, and finally Pentecost Monday.
Schools additionally have two or three vacation days at their disposal to plan as they see fit. These are usually used to “bridge the gap” between the weekend an an official holiday, if said holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday.
Kids don’t have school on Wednesdays and weekends (but they have school on Wednesday morning in middle and high schools.
School starts the first few days of September and end at the end of the first week of July (earlier in highschool because of exams), this year it was September 1 to july 7.
Then:
2 weeks in late october
2 weeks for christmas
2 weeks in febuary
2 weeks in april.
They are 3 zones for school vacations dates, each zone have their own dates for small vacations (except for Christmas, it’s the same for everyone) so that there isn’t to many people on vacations sites at the same time so zone A starts, then 1 week later zone B starts then one week later zone C starts. So the tourism industry benefit for actually 4 weeks of more work instead of 2.
With the exception of the winter break, all holidays are the same throught the country. So, we have:
– Autumn holidays: 9/10 days in late October and early November. They are centered around the state holidays of Reformation day (31.10.) and Day of the dead (1.11.)
– Christmas-New Year Holidays: Unless there is a weekend right before or after it is from 25 December until 2 January (both 1 and 2 January are public holidays)
– 8th of February (Culture day) is a public holiday
– Winter holidays: one week in the second half of February – with western Slovenia and eastern Slovenia having different weeks off (mainly because these holidays are meant for skiing, and apparently it would be too crowded if all had the holiday at the same time)
– Easter Monday is a public holiday
– May Holidays: these are the weird ones. Basically there are three public holidays around the 1st of May (27.4. is Day of resistance against Occupator, 1./2.5 is Labour day) and mostly it is only a six day holiday. Sometimes (if weekend falls outside of this time period), they last a full week. Never understood why.
– Summer holidays: last for 68 days from 25 June until 31 August. Sometimes you would get lucky and they would be from 23 June until 2 September (because the first and last day of school both fall on a weekend in the same year.)
It varies a bit throughout the country but roughly
~ 5 days in autumn
~ 2 weeks Christmas/New Year (24.12-06.01)
– 1 week February
– 10 days for Easter
– 9 weeks summer holiday
additionally the kids get days off on various religious holidays and public holidays and each school can decide a few themselves
Summer break, 8-10 weeks. Usually from the beginning/middle of june until the middle of August.
Autumn break, 1 week at the end of October.
Christmas break, 2.5 – 3 weeks. Usually a couple days before Christmas until the second week in January.
Sports break, 1 week in February. Each municipality can choose to put the break on one of four-ish weeks so that ski resorts don’t get too crowded. Each of the big three cities have their breaks on a different week.
Easter break, 1 week. Either the week before or after Easter.
Then we also have 2-3 days off each semester, called study days, where the teachers usually go on some course in leadership or whatever.
Additional days off are: Friday before or Monday after Easter (depending on which week your break is), 1st of May, Christ’s Ascension (a Thursday in the middle of May), as well as National Day which is the 6th of June.
Also also, if a holiday like national day is on a day where it is only one working day between that day and another day off, like Tuesday (as it is this year) we also get Monday off as a “pinched” day.
This is always the case for Ascension Day as it always is on a Thursday (we always get Friday off) whereas the other holidays move around.
It depends on your educational level and where you are in the Basque Country. This is how it usually goes:
– A couple of days for local festivities. At my primary school, they were in September. At my secondary schools, they were in January. And, at my university, they are in April (in fact, right now).
– The 12th of October, if it is an official holiday in your area. It has always been for me. It isn’t the case in the North of the Basque Country. (Hispanic Day, I think)
– The first of November. (I don’t remember what it was called but it’s semi-religious)
– The sixth and eighth of December. Schools usually have the seventh off as well (a three-day holiday). Not a holiday in the North. (The sixth is “Constitution Day” and the eighth is a religious holiday.)
– Christmas: usually 2-3 weeks (starts around the 20th of December, ends on the seventh of January). It can be longer: I had a 30-day long break once.
– Carnival: it was a massive thing where I grew up, so we got a week off. Some schools in some cities give 1 or 2 days off. This is in February.
– Easter: 2-3 weeks in late March or early April.
– The first of May is almost always a holiday. (Labour Day)
– Some schools (especially religious ones/those who belong to an organisation) have different days off. My secondary schools had a week off in May to celebrate the birth of the founder.
– A few schools in rural areas may give days off for festivities happening in another town or village. The school in the village next to my hometown does this: students get a couple of days off in September.
Edited to clarify a few things and add something new: if the local government wants to create a random holiday day, it can do so. I’ve had a couple of random days off on days that aren’t usually holidays. Those festivities are usually at the local level, to commemorate something. They do not happen every year.
Edited to add: I don’t have a clue about how things work in the North. I’m sorry. However, I can reasonably assume that the 6th and 8th of December and the 12th of October aren’t holidays.
6-8 weeks of summer vacation in July and August, 1 week in late October for autumn vacation, 2 weeks of Christmas vacation in last week of December and first week of January, 1 week of spring vacation in late February, 1-2 weeks of May vacation in the last week of April and/or first week of May to coincide with national holidays on April 27 and May 5.
The vacation periods are decided by the national government. The country is divided into three parts (North, Center, South) and each region will have vacation at a different time to spread the peak season. Christmas and May vacations are the same for everyone, for Autumn and Spring vacations 2 regions will share a holiday week and the third region has a different week, and for summer each region will start and end in a different week. So region 1 may have summer vacation from the second week of July to third week of August, region 2 third week of July to fourth week of August, and region 3 fourth week of July to fifth week of August/first week of September.
The weeks decided for Autumn and Spring holiday are advisory and schools can choose a different week. This is often done by schools in the South for example when their spring holiday doesn’t coincide with Carnival, they just move it a week so it does.
Public holidays are two days of Christmas on Dec 25th and 26th when those fall during the school week, New Year’s Day, Good Friday (this isn’t a mandatory day off but almost all schools use it anyway) and Easter Monday, King’s Day (April 27), Liberation Day (May 5), Ascension Day, Pentecost Monday. But vacation periods tend to be planned so they coincide with holidays with a set date so kids generally already have the day off on Christmas, New Year’s, and King’s Day and/or Liberation Day. Do note that most of the time Good Friday and Liberation day aren’t national holidays for employees but they almost always are for kids.
There’s no single answer for the UK. Education is devolved in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, so things are run somewhat differently to England in some ways.
England have also effectively ‘privatised’ a lot of state schools by taking them out of local authority control, and giving them full responsibility over their own affairs. It’s called ‘Academy Status’, and I don’t think many parents have realised this yet…
Also, IIRC Scotland and NI have more public holidays than England and Wales do.
Oh, and to further complicate things, different counties may stagger their holidays by a week or two to relieve things for major tourist attractions.
To give term dates for my local county, Flintshire:
Period | Start | End
:– | :– | :–
Autumn Term 2023 | Friday 1 September |Friday 22 December
Autumn Half Term 2023 | Monday 30 October | Friday 3 November
Spring Term 2024 | Monday 8 January | Friday 22 March
Spring Half Term 2024 | Monday 12 February | Friday 16 February
Summer Term 2024 | Monday 8 April | Friday 19 July
Summer Half Term 2024 | Monday 27 May | Friday 31 May
EDIT: there will also be a 2 week break for Easter in March / April.
9 weeks of summer break (july, august + one week in september)
1 week in autumn around our national holiday (26th October and all saints/hallows 1st/2nd November) which is rather recent addition, beforehand schools had several days they could choose for themselves (which angered parents with kids in different schools)
2 weeks around Christmas and New Year
1 week semester break (first or second week of February, depending on your region)
1 week before Easter as well as the monday and tuesday after easter.
In addition
A bunch of Christian national holidays and things like May 1st (labour day) and the tuesday after Pentecost.
Thats for schools, universities tend to have 3 months of summer break and a month at midterm semester break in addition to the other free weeks.
We have 2,5 moths of summer vacation, 1 week for spring and fall each, and somewhat less than two weeks for winter, including christmas and new year.
To take out 1 week for skiing is optional.
And than we have some single day days offs, march 15 for our revolution, oktober 23 for our revolution, may 1 for labour day, augustus 20 for new bread. I don’t know what that last one is really about.
Summer vacation 2,5 months, in May/June-August
Autumn vacation a week, in October
Christmas vacation a little bit over a week, in December-January
Winter vacation (used to called skiing vacation) about a week, in February
Then there’s independence day in December, and the ones like Easter etc.
In Ireland senior schools (12-18 year olds) get 12 weeks in the summer (start of June to end of august) a week at the end did October, two weeks over Christmas and new year, one week in mid February and two weeks at Easter. Then there’s two or three bank holidays throughout the year as well and schools can take three discretionary days throughout the year that staff vote on
One week autumn break – where I live it’s always week 40, but in some parts of the country it’s week 41. About a week and a half off for Christmas and New Year’s, depending on which day of the week they fall on. One week winter break, and again, where I live it’s week 8, but it might be week 9 depending on where you are. The week before Easter plus Easter Monday off. The 1st of May is Labor Day, and the 17th of May is Constitution Day, Norway’s main national holiday, and both of those are always days off school. Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Monday/Whitmonday are also days off.
Some schools are also closed for Election Day, which is a Monday in September every other year.
Summer break is typically 8 or 9 weeks, from mid-to-late June to mid-to-late August.
Elementary and lower secondary schools (from grades 1 through 10) are run by the local municipality, and upper secondary schools are run by the counties. Those authorities decide the exact dates that school starts and ends, whether the schools close for Election Day, and the timing of the autumn and winter breaks. This means if you’re in upper secondary school and you have a younger sibling in lower secondary or elementary school, they might have slightly different school holidays than you do.
Ah right! I remember dad telling me about having 3 months off in the Summer, back then you could actually have a Summer job.
I think we had 2 months in HS which is longer than here in Denmark. I think the schools have 7 weeks here.
https://skolernes-ferie.dk/
ETA: I’m really struggling with basic reading comprehension due to stress. Then there’s a week in Fall which in the west is week 42 and week 43 in the east – I think. They get around 10 days off for Christmas and a week off around week 8 (Feb.). We number the weeks of the year here in DK.
Then there’s Easter and some random holidays up until the Summer break.
In Ireland they seem to be off all the time. They get three months off for summer and some schools do half days on a random day of the week plus the usual one week half terms, two weeks Christmas and two weeks at Easter