No extended September holiday for schools in South Africa
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has dismissed new fake reports doing the rounds claiming that the 2025 school calendar has been changed to give learners an “extended September break”.
The reports are being distributed through fake news websites that follow a now familiar modus operandi, and have been picked up by undiscerning readers and spread over social media.
The ‘report’ claimed that the DBE was reviewing the 2025 school calendar “to better balance teaching days and public holidays”, resulting in learners getting an “extended September break”.
As with most fake news stories, the post is scant on any detail outside the claim itself, making no reference to any official statements or government gazettes, where such changes would be posted.
Importantly, there is no “September break” in 2025, with the third term ending on 3 October 2025, and the school holidays running from 4 October to 12 October. The fourth term then begins on 13 October.
It would also make little sense to give learners “more downtime”, as the department already gave three extra school holidays between April and May 2025 to account for several public holidays.
This resulted in an ‘extra’ extra week off for learners in a peak public holiday period.
The only public holiday in September is Wednesday, 24 September, which is Heritage day. Any “extended September break” to account for this public holiday would have to revolve around that day.
However, there is no plausible way to do so in 2025 without giving four extra days off that week, or moving the entire third-term holiday forward by two weeks—both of which would require an entire reworking of the school calendar.
But there is no need to speculate. The department confirmed to BusinessTech that no changes to the 2025 calendar have been made.
“We can confirm that there are no changes to the 2025 schooling calendar. Any announcement not made on the official social media accounts of the department should be viewed as fake news by the public,” it said.
Official 2025 Public School Calendar
Calendar-setting process
Notably, the latest post, published on 31 August, is just the latest to make the claim that the DBE is changing the school calendar on the fly.
Several fake reports in June also claimed that changes had been made to the calendar, prompting a response from the DBE, dismissing them and warning against scams.
These false reports disregard the fundamental process involved with setting the school calendar, which requires gazetting.
School calendars in South Africa go through official gazetting processes, which include publishing draft versions for comment, years before they come into effect.
For example, the draft calendar for the 2025 school year was gazetted in August 2022, with the final calendar published in early 2023.
The draft calendars for 2026 and 2027, meanwhile, were gazetted in October 2024, with the final calendars published earlier this year.
While the DBE minister is empowered to make changes to the finalised calendars, this is only in exeptional circumstances, and also have to go through official channels.
The department was forced to make significant changes to school calendars in 2020, 2021 and 2022 to account for the national state of disaster in effect to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic and various levels of lockdown.
Following these chaotic years, a new clause was added to the DBE’s policy documentation that specifies that “on a good cause shown, the Minister may authorise deviation from the Policy in exceptional circumstances.”
Again, however, the policy is clear that any changes must be communicated by the department itself, including through social media channels.
Where learners will see a September break to account for Heritage Day is in 2026 and 2027, when the third-term school holiday is starting earlier.
The confirmed calendars for 2026 and 2027 can be seen below:
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