Whether you are a teacher, student or parent, it is always useful to have a snapshot of school holidays for the academic year ahead.

At Athena Analytics, we’ve pulled together the most important dates including bank holidays, mid-term breaks, end-of-term holidays, and various dates related to the state exams, into one helpful graphic. 

When looking at an academic calendar, there’s a couple of factors that are important to note.

Can a School Customise Their School Holidays?

The date that a secondary school decides to open in the autumn and close for the summer is at its own discretion. However, secondary schools in Ireland typically open in the weeks surrounding the 1st of September, with some schools starting in the last week of August, and others in the first week of September. 

Each school must be open for a minimum of 167 days, when they start and end is up to them. Schools can use any remaining days to extend the summer holiday period or to close on religious or other holidays.

However, schools cannot use these discretionary days to:

• Extend the Christmas holidays
• Extend Easter holidays
• Extend mid-term breaks. 

A school may, however, need to reduce the length of the mid-term break or Easter break to make up for lost time. This would only occur if a school closed during the year due to unforeseen closures and is no longer on track to meet its minimum of 167 days. 

Some schools use their discretionary days to extend bank holiday weekends and others extend the May bank holiday break to a full week. However, this is dependent on the individual school.