Beginning/ lenght of school year?
I'm just wondering this out of curiosity. I see here that there are great discrepancies in the date of the start of the school year (from late July to September).
In California, where I am, the state is broken up into many school districts which may cover a very large city or several smaller cities. Generally, the schools in the school district start on the same day but this day can differ district to district.
My daughter's elementary school starts August 8th, but neighboring school districts have different start dates throughout August. Her cousins, in Washington State, don't start until early September. My daughter's last day of school is June 1st. So they get a 2 month summer break and the extra weeks are given for time off at Christmas, Thanksgiving, Presidents Day, and Spring Break.
School districts here can elect different schedules entirely. Most do traditional (with a 2-3 month summer break), some do Year Round (no summer break, but extra winter and spring break time off), and some do variations in between. When I lived in Yuma, Arizona, I went to an elementary school that had year round school, because summers there got up to 120+ degrees Fahrenheit (48+ degrees Celsius) so it made no sense to have a summer off when kids were safer staying indoors during summer and that could be done at school (not all families there have air conditioning), and they could have more time off during winter when it was more tolerable outside. Since there are so many different factors affecting each school district, they have the ability to set a schedule that makes sense for them and their area.
Thanks for all the answers! It's interesting to see that while it's slightly different by state/province but not much for everybody. Except in Australia of course! :)
Here it's based on the school district
My DD starts on the 11th but a friend's kids start on the 17 in a different district
The kids have 180 days of school all around
Parents vote on a schedule a couple of years ahead of time and that's how they decide when to start and end school and what type of vacation schedule works for more families
School starts around August 20th and will get over around May 20th. With a 2 week break in December and 1 week break in march. School is about 180 days- they just switched it to hours... But its the equivalent to whatever 180 days was. School begins at 8:25 in the morning and is over at 3:15 for pre-k - 12th. And im from a very small town in Iowa
Many places in Texas start in late August and get out in late May or early June. We don't have a minimum number of days, it's now calculated in minutes of instruction to give districts more control. So many places added five minutes to the day to shave off days at the end of the year and get out a little sooner. It's left up to individual districts and school boards to decide.
I am in Mass. The city my niece's live in starts late August and the city we live in starts the Wednesday after labor day. So all places are usually back in the same 2 weeks but the end date varies. Everyone goes 180 days but depending on when they start and how many snow days.
I live in Australia. We start in early February n end in December. Public n private schools have different dates. We have 4 terms each year. Each term is 10 weeks with 2 weeks breaks in between. In the end of the year we have our summer holidays in december which is about 6 weekspp
It's always interesting to hear about how it is elsewhere! Thanks ladies!
I'm in Indiana & most of the schools in our county start within a week of each other. Not all schools call the same amount of snow days. & Some of the schools like the district we are in utilize e-learning on some of those snow days so they aren't required to make them up at year end. So ending times can vary. I think in general most schools in our state start within a 2 week window roughly.
I'm in the uk. There are 192 teaching days plus 5 training days for staff. All schools start the week of the august bank holiday so on or around the 1st september. The school year end varies greatly depending on which half terms they choose to take and also if they close for additional religious holidays such as eid and divali. Some schools close as early as 15th July whilst others are open until around the 27th July. The school year is broken into 3 terms separated by a 2 week break at Christmas and easter. Each term has a one week half term holiday so the term isn't too long. So we have an additional week at october, february and end of may. My school are taking 2 weeks at October so we stay later in July.