Big changes for school calendars in South Africa – including public holidays

The Department of Basic Education has published proposed changes to the National Policy for Determining School Calendars for Public Schools in South Africa for public comment.

The changes are being put forward as a result of the last three years of disruptions to schools due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and try to give the minister of education and the department more flexibility in determining the open and close times of each term, as well as mitigating differences between coastal and inland schools.

Specifically, the proposed amendments want to remove references to specific months when schools should close for the holidays after each term and open the door for removing the staggered coastal/inland calendar.

The big changes include:

• The fourth term must end in the first week of December (previously, the second week of December);
• Removing specific mention of months where terms should end for added flexibility;
• Better integration of public holidays;
• Adding that a staggered calendar can still be implemented;
• Allowing for more religious holidays for minority learners (previously, the maximum was two days);
• Allowing for deviations on an urgent basis in response to disasters or exceptional circumstances;
• Allowing for approved changes to be announced and disseminated through social media (previously, this was only allowed in newspapers).

South Africa’s schools currently have a staggered calendar, where coastal schools start the new year a week after inland schools. Because of this, coastal schools have a shorter holiday at the end of the first term than inland schools, synchronising for the rest of the year.

The confirmed school calendar for 2024, however, and continuing in 2025 and 2026, the department plans for schools in both coastal and inland regions to start and end at the same time.

However, the department’s proposed changes do not eliminate the staggered calendar completely, noting that this would indirectly impact things like tourism, road safety and traffic.

“Seeing that the timing of school holidays could have an effect on traffic flow, which, in turn, has potential road safety implications, the Department should plan the school calendar in a way that will assist in minimising traffic flow relating to school holidays,” it said.

“The aim is to allocate different dates to the two clusters in the first term so that traffic density before the opening of schools for the new school year is kept within acceptable levels.”

Despite this, the policy states that the school holiday schedule of each cluster must be kept reasonably constant to make short- to medium-term planning easier – not only for those directly involved in education but also for those indirectly involved, such as the tourism industry, members of the public, the private sector, the road traffic authorities, parents and learners.

Public holidays

Another change already confirmed for 2024 – and proposed for future calendars – is to ensure that school holidays are linked with as many public holidays as possible to maximise school time.

Although the dates of the Easter weekend differ from year to year, the department said that every effort must be made, where possible, to have the Easter weekend fall within the school holiday in order to prevent disruption of the teaching and learning programme.

If a long weekend begins on a public holiday that falls on a Friday, and such a weekend coincides with the beginning of the school holidays, schools must close on the Wednesday and not on the Thursday.

If a public holiday falls on the first Monday of the school holidays, schools must close on the previous Thursday and not on the Friday.

When the calendar is planned, every effort must be made to ensure that there is no public holiday during the first or last week of a school term, the department said.

“Public holidays that occur during the first or last week of a school term disrupt the academic work of the school,” it said.

Where a public holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, the Monday before or the Friday after the public holiday must be declared a school holiday.

If, owing to public and school holidays in April, a week has only two school days, those two days must be declared school holidays to avoid disrupting the teaching and learning programme.

Religious holidays

The department is also making way for more religious holidays in the year for individual learners.

Schools where the majority of learners are of a particular faith may close for a maximum of two days of the year to observe religious days. This policy remains unchanged.

However, where learners are part of a minority religious group, the new proposals want to remove the two-day limit to avoid any Constitutional conflict – setting no limit for the number of days a student can take off for religious reasons if they are in a minority religious group.

“The Constitution provides that (these learners) may not be disadvantaged or discriminated against in any way,” the department said.

If a school closes for a religious holiday, it is up to that school to ensure that all learners catch up on the work that is missed. For the minority learners, it is up to them to catch up on the work they miss due to them taking time off.

However, schools may not plan exams or assessments on these days, and minority learners must inform the school within the first ten days of the year in writing of their intention to take specific days off for this purpose.

Stakeholders have until 4 June to comment on the proposals.

The proposed changes can be read below:

Read: New school calendars for South Africa – with a big change for start dates