Why do New Zealand schools have different start dates?
Our national school calendar is a complex beast, partly based on farming schedules from 150 years ago and continually tweaked over that time.
To the education outsider, the different start dates of New Zealand’s schools throughout the country can seem pretty random.
And why do schools often start before Waitangi Day, so kids go back for two or three days before heading off again for a long weekend? How about those half days that often appear at the end of the year?
Sometimes parents, especially working parents, can feel that teachers and principals are bent on inconveniencing them with an apparently sporadic schooling schedule.
Many, many factors will go into determining the start and end date of your child's school.
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After speaking to three education experts and reading the Ministry of Education’s explainer on this subject, the school calendar makes slightly more sense, even if some of it is dictated by farming schedules from 150 years ago.
“It’s overly complicated, and I think it’s one of those things within education that’s probably over the years, it’s just had bits added and bits added and bits added,” says Lucy Naylor, president of the Auckland Primary Principals Association and principal of Millford School.
“But yeah, it's very confusing for parents, I’m sure.”
Here are your school calendar questions answered:
Why don’t New Zealand schools start on the same date?
New Zealand schools are self-governing and have some flexibility to choose their start and finish dates, explains Naylor. The Ministry of Education gives schools a two-week window at the start of the year where they can choose their start day, which will impact the day they end. This year, that window is Monday, 26 January until Monday, 9 February.
The start dates comes down to how principals want to begin their school’s year with team building days and upskilling days for teachers, often slated before students arrive. The needs of the local community are also a factor, including local anniversary days that differ around the country.
“...We try to align with our local intermediate school, so that parents who have children at multiple schools have the same start date,” says Naylor.
Some schools start on the short Waitangi Day week to get teacher interviews and orientation out of the way, while giving kids a soft landing into the school year. Others like to begin on the Monday after Waitangi Day so they have a straight run to start the year, says Naylor.
Within that two-week start, some high schools might stagger the arrival of students by year over consecutive days, says Jason Miles, the president of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, who is on leave from his principal role at Kaiapoi North School in Canterbury.
“From what I've seen in our local high schools, they have their year 13 leaders with the year nines on that first day and have more of an orientation day, where they learn about the routines of the school.
“They have some activities so that the year nines feel part of the environment before everyone turns up the following day.”
While the beginning and end of each year are up to the school, the end of term one, the end and the beginning of term two and three, and the beginning of term four are dictated by the Ministry of Education.
State integrated schools must stick to the same schedule outline as government schools. Some private schools are also bound by it and other private schools have a more autonomous schedules.
What determines a school's last day?
Schools must instruct students for a set number of half days each year. What a parent might see as a regular school day from 9am to 3pm-ish is actually two half days in the eyes of education people, says Karen Tui Boyes, an education consultant at Spectrum Education.
“The half-day model goes back decades when school days varied widely, when you had transport and farming calendars and local conditions mattered...
“...When kids would have to go and work on the farms because, you know, it was calving season, lambing or something, and so they had a bit more of a buffer system.”
This year, the government granted schools fewer half instruction days than normal - 378 half days for primary, intermediate, and specialist schools - to give teachers more teacher-only days to get on top of the new curriculum. Secondary schools have 376 half days for 2026.
So schools must get through all of those half instruction days before they can end their year. How many additional teacher-only days and whether the Easter public holidays and Anzac Day fall in the school holidays or not, will impact how quickly a school gets through those mandated half instruction days, says Boyes.
Private schools often have their own thing going on with compulsory sports on Saturday, says Boyes. Those sport days are often counted towards their half-day tally, typically resulting in a longer September/October school holiday and a longer summer holiday.
What about half-days at the end of term?
A lot of schools send kids home early on the last day of term, and there is a bit of a technicality at work here. It’s likely that day is still counted as two half days of instruction because students only need to be marked present at the beginning of that second half day to be counted as two half days. So if students leave at midday or 1pm, it likely counts as two half days.
“Children are past their best learning, so everyone, I think everyone is ready for that break to begin,” says Miles, adding that schools do take into account the childcare needs of families, but it isn’t the only factor.
