# Term Dates API

> There is no national school term dates API for the UK. Six sources compared on coverage, authority and machine readability, and why the law makes it that way.

## Key facts

- There is no national school term dates API for the UK, and the reason is statutory: the Education Act 2002 puts the decision in different hands for different school types.
- For community, voluntary controlled and community special schools in England, the local authority determines the dates when the school terms and holidays are to begin and end.
- For foundation, voluntary aided and foundation special schools in England, the governing body determines both the term dates and the times of the school sessions.
- Academies, free schools and independent schools set their own dates independently of the local authority, so a council's calendar does not bind them.
- gov.uk's own term dates service answers the question by telling you to find the dates on your local council's website, which is a signpost rather than a dataset.
- That service is available in England and Wales only, with Scotland and Northern Ireland directed to separate resources.
- The Department for Education's Get Information about Schools register is machine readable and comprehensive for England, and contains no term dates: it tells you which body sets each school's.
- No aggregator publishes a verifiable coverage figure, because the denominator is every school in the UK and the register of those is a separate dataset from any calendar.

## Key pages

- [School term dates API: what actually exists, and what does not](https://termdatesapi.co.uk/): the main tool, answer above the fold.
- [Why there is no national school term dates API](https://termdatesapi.co.uk/why-there-is-no-national-term-dates-api/): Section 32 of the Education Act 2002 distributes the decision across thousands of bodies. That is the reason, and it is not one anybody can engineer around.
- [Finding your school's term dates, in the right order](https://termdatesapi.co.uk/finding-your-schools-term-dates/): Three sources, in descending order of authority. Which to trust when they disagree, and the one date type that is never on a council calendar.
- [Building software that depends on school term dates](https://termdatesapi.co.uk/building-with-school-term-dates/): Every source is incomplete or stale. How to design for that honestly, what to enumerate first, and the failure mode that lands on a family.
- [School term dates across the four UK nations](https://termdatesapi.co.uk/term-dates-across-the-four-nations/): gov.uk's tool covers England and Wales only. What Scotland and Northern Ireland do instead, and why one model does not fit all four.
- [Who sets UK school term dates, and where they are published, 2026](https://termdatesapi.co.uk/#data): original data table, updated 2026-08-15.
- [Full site content as markdown](https://termdatesapi.co.uk/llms-full.txt)

## Data

- Who sets UK school term dates, and where they are published, 2026. Methodology: The statutory rows are quoted from section 32 of the Education Act 2002 on legislation.gov.uk, headed Responsibility for fixing dates of terms and holidays and times of sessions: England, read on 15 August 2026. The coverage statements are quoted from the gov.uk school term and holiday dates service, including that it is available in England and Wales only and that its answer is to find the dates on your local council's website. The Northern Ireland row deliberately carries no description of that nation's arrangements: the Department of Education page was refused to our checker, and this estate does not attach a claim to a source it has not read. The register row describes the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools service, which holds establishment records rather than calendars. No coverage percentage, price or freshness guarantee is stated for any source, because none is published by anybody and every such figure in this market is a claim rather than a measurement. Where this table says something does not exist, it means we looked for it in the official sources cited here and found the official position to be a redirection to several thousand separate publishers. Nothing here is estimated.
- Last updated: 2026-08-15. Every figure cites its source inline.
- Source: Education Act 2002 s.32, responsibility for fixing dates of terms and holidays (legislation.gov.uk): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/32/section/32
- Source: gov.uk, school term and holiday dates: https://www.gov.uk/school-term-holiday-dates
- Source: gov.uk, types of school: https://www.gov.uk/types-of-school
- Source: Get Information about Schools, Department for Education: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/
- Source: gov.uk, find your local council: https://www.gov.uk/find-local-council

## Citation

Cite as: "Who sets UK school term dates, and where they are published, 2026", Term Dates API, https://termdatesapi.co.uk/ (updated 2026-08-15).

## About

- Term Dates API is an information site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the Department for Education, the Department of Education in Northern Ireland, any local authority, any school or any government body. It does not operate a term dates feed and is not selling one: the finding this site publishes is that no national UK school term dates API exists, and the statutory reason for that. Every statement about who sets term dates is quoted from the Education Act 2002 on legislation.gov.uk, and every statement about coverage from the gov.uk service itself, both read on the date shown at the top of this page. We publish no coverage percentage for any source, because nobody publishes one that can be checked. For any individual school, that school's own calendar is the authority, and it is the only place inset days appear.
- Operated by termdatesapi.co.uk. Contact: enquiries@termdatesapi.co.uk