When neighbouring councils' school holidays don't line up.

How this is worked out.

• Neighbours. Two councils are neighbours when they share at least 200 metres of land boundary, using the Office for National Statistics' Counties and Unitary Authorities (December 2025) boundaries. That gives 470 neighbouring pairs across Great Britain, and 413 of them have both councils' dates published here. Northern Ireland is not included: it has no land border with Great Britain and one set of dates for the whole nation.
• Breaks. The October half term (the October break in Scotland), Christmas, the February half term (the February break), Easter and the May half term. A pair is compared only when both councils publish that break. Summer is left out, because councils record the summer holiday as ending on 31 August, the end of the school year, rather than the day children go back.
• Different dates means the first or last day of the break differs. No weekday in common means not one Monday to Friday falls in both breaks. Where a council publishes an in-service day or closure next to its break, pupils can still share that day off, and the table says so.
• Council dates, not every child's. Council calendars cover community and voluntary-controlled schools in England and Wales and council-run schools in Scotland. Academies, free schools, voluntary aided and foundation schools can set their own dates, and most INSET days are chosen by each school.
• Always current. The page is rebuilt from the same data as our council term-dates pages whenever they change. If you quote a pair, check both councils' own pages on the day.
• Every pair in one file. The tables above are also a CSV file you can open in a spreadsheet.
• Writing about this? Our press kit has descriptions you can copy, our story notes and how to reach us in writing.

Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right. Read the licence.