Decision details

The school term and holiday dates for the academic year 2025- 2026 have been consulted upon.
Executive will be required to determine the calendar for 2025-2026 for North Yorkshire community and voluntary controlled schools.
If there are no objections to the proposals this decision will be taken by the Executive Member for Education and Skills.

To approve the term and holiday dates for community, voluntary controlled, community special schools and maintained nursery schools for 2025/2026 as set out in the calendar identified at Appendix 1 to the report.

School employers are required to set the term dates of their school year. Employers are: the local authority in community, voluntary controlled and community special schools and maintained nursery schools; the governing body in foundation and voluntary aided schools; the academy trust in academies and Free Schools. The Education (School Day and School Year) (England) regulations 1991 require all maintained schools to educate their pupils for at least 380 sessions (190 days) in each school year. These regulations do not apply to academies and Free Schools; the academy trust is responsible for deciding the length of the school year. It is hoped that for consistency across North Yorkshire all schools will adopt the recommended term dates.
In addition to these teaching days each school has five professional development (PD) days for teaching staff. As in previous years the authority has proposed three of these days. The remaining two days will be identified by each school from the calendar.

The consultation to determine a school calendar for 2025/2026 was launched on 22 March and closed on 1 May 2024. All maintained schools and academies, teachers’ associations, trade unions and other local authorities across Yorkshire and the North East were consulted.

The authority received 24 responses from the online survey. These were from 18 primary schools, 3 primary Federation and 3 secondary schools. It is the view of the officers that none of the issues raised as part of the consultation greatly affect the proposed term dates for 2025-26. However, in recognition of the comments received in relation to the Professional Development day in December 2024 (originally proposed for 19 December 2025) this has been moved to the suggested alternative date of 5 January 2026.