The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has published new policy amendments for public comment that will change how school calendars are determined in South Africa, starting with the 2026 school calendar.
According to BusinessTech, the main proposal is to eliminate the distinction between inland and coastal school calendars, a system that has existed for decades to accommodate travel schedules and teacher preparation time.
Historically, inland schools, in provinces such as Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West, and Free State, opened a week earlier than coastal schools in KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, and Northern Cape.
This staggered arrangement was intended to help families returning from coastal holidays and give schools extra time to plan before reopening.
However, the department noted that this model became redundant after the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the temporary adoption of a unified school calendar in 2020.
That single-calendar approach has since been maintained through 2024 and 2025 and will now be made permanent.
The DBE said the change aims to “regularise the school calendar” and ensure more effective use of teaching days.
“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,” the department said.
“The focus is on ensuring that there is no loss in terms of the number of days allocated for schooling.”
Under the new policy, all public schools will now open in the third week of January, regardless of province.
The four-term structure will remain, but the scheduling of terms and holidays will be standardised across the country.
Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube said the revised policy was designed to “maximise teaching time and promote administrative consistency.”
She added that uniformity would simplify planning for educators, learners, and parents while making national assessments easier to coordinate.
The department is also reviewing how public holidays are accounted for in the academic year to prevent unnecessary loss of school days.
In addition to the policy proposal, the DBE has published draft school calendars for 2026, 2027, and 2028 for public input.
These draft calendars are part of the department’s long-term planning cycle, which releases proposed schedules several years in advance.
The final 2026 school calendar is expected to be gazetted in early 2025 after all public comments have been reviewed.
