Australia school holidays — how the dates actually work

There is no single national table of Australia school holidays, and any site showing one is guessing. Here is who really sets the dates, the shape of a typical year, and how to get a calendar you can trust.

Who sets the dates

Each state and territory education department publishes official term dates for its government schools years in advance — Australia is the closest of the four to having "national" dates, there are just eight sets of them.
Catholic and independent schools usually track the state dates but can vary by a few days.
The school year follows the southern-hemisphere summer: it opens in late January and closes in mid-December.

The typical rhythm

These are patterns, not official dates — the whole point of this page is that the exact dates are local:

Typical school-year rhythm in the Australia
Period	Typical pattern
Four terms	Roughly ten weeks each, from late January or early February to mid-December.
Term breaks	About two weeks between terms — around April, July, and late September to early October, with exact weeks differing by state.
Summer holidays	Around six weeks over Christmas, mid-December to late January.

Where the official dates live

Search your state education department’s site for "school term dates" — each publishes several years ahead, and those pages are the authoritative source.

What to print

The school-year calendar puts August to July on one page — print it, pencil in your own district's dates, and it works for any school. The calendar maker can mark Australia public holidays on it, in either Letter or A4, free and without a watermark.

Countries with official national dates

Fourteen countries do publish school-break dates centrally, and for those the exact dates are on this site, region by region: