About Term Dates API
There is no national feed. Here is every source that does exist, and what each one costs you
What is on this site
One question, "school term dates api", answered with a comparison that works on the page with no account, 4 guides on the questions around it, a data table you can cite (the figures and their method), and the sources every figure rests on.
- Why there is no national school 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: 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: 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: 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.
Reach us
Contact for a question about the site, or enquiries@termdatesapi.co.uk. The legal terms are on Terms and Privacy.
Term Dates API is an independent site operated by Ellul Solutions Ltd. 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.