Klerksdorp Midweek, Klerksdorp - The Department of Basic Education has gazetted new policy changes for determining school calendars in South Africa for public comment. The main change being implemented by the DBE is to remove all differentiation between coastal and inland schools and to formally get rid of the staggered school calendar.
South Africa has historically adopted a staggered school calendar where inland schools started a week earlier than their coastal counterparts.
This was done to accommodate people who were travelling from holidays, and to give schools and educators time to plan and prepare accordingly.
However, this system was heavily disrupted during the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, and schools across the country quickly adopted a single calendar.
The department was forced to make significant changes to school calendars in 2020, 2021 and 2022 to account for the national state of disaster in effect to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic and various levels of lockdown.
The DBE tried returning to the staggered school calendar in 2023, post-pandemic, but in 2024, it adopted the change that both coastal and inland regions would start at the same time.
This was continued in 2025, and will now be made a permanent change going forward.
The department previously stated that the change was necessary to regularise the school calendar, amid wider changes to better lay out the school year.
This includes maximising school time by better planning around public holidays.
“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 previously.
“The focus is on ensuring that there is no loss in terms of the number of days allocated for schooling.”
Under the standing policy, the department makes a distinction between inland schools and coastal schools. Inland schools are those in the Free State, Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West, while coastal schools are those in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape and Western Cape. Under the amendments, this distinction is removed.
Following from that, the policy also seeks to remove the start-date stipulations, being that inland schools must open during the second week of January, while coastal schools must open during the third week of January.
In the updated policy, all schools must open in the third week of January, and all school terms will be regularised to follow the same structure.
The department called for comments on the policy changes, and submissions can be sent to
