2025 school calendar gets a major shake-up

In a major overhaul of the school calendar, the National Department of Basic Education has announced key changes for 2025, impacting coastal and inland schools.

With a unified start date of January 15 and an entire week designated as special school holidays, the changes aim to streamline the academic year and adapt to public holiday overlaps.

The department’s spokesperson, Elijah Mhlanga, says the changes should also minimise traffic congestion.

“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,” he says.

Mhlanga adds that school terms must not begin on a Monday as this leads to high traffic flow the day before and leaves insufficient time for school hostel staff to prepare for learners to return.

“All possible steps must be taken to avoid a late start of the school year – that is, in the fourth week of January – as this pushes back all the terms.”

Mhlanga says the department reviews the policy’s impact every year and considers the number of days available in the coming years based on the national calendar.

“The focus is on ensuring that there is no loss in terms of the number of days allocated for schooling,” he adds.

Here are the changes:

Next year’s school opening date is two days earlier than 2024. As such, the academic year will consist of 200 school days.

It’s expected that next year will have 27 standard school holidays, an increase from 25 this year.

Unlike 2024, 2025 is expected to have three special school holidays, namely April 29, April 30 and May 2.