A Ministry of Education blunder almost shortened the 2027 school year.
An Education Ministry document, released under the Official Information Act, states that schools must be open for at least 380 “half-days” per year. However, the ministry overlooked the Matariki holiday in its 2027 term date calculations.
“An error has been identified in the 2027 Term 2 half-day counts, caused by the 2027 Matariki holiday being excluded from the calculations.”
“With this public holiday included, the 2027 Term 2 and full-year half-day counts will reduce by two, meaning the minimum half-days for the 2027 year falls from 380 to 378,” the report said.
The document, dated 10 June 2025, warned that leaving the dates unchanged was not advisable.
“In order to maximise classroom learning time, reducing the minimum below 380 is not recommended, especially as the 2027 school year will already be affected by Easter holidays falling within term time.”
It stated that the sole fix for the term dates was to move Term 1’s latest start from Thursday, 4 February, to Wednesday, 3 February.
The report urged the education minister to approve the change by 11 June 2025.
It outlined that the ministry would notify schools via its School Bulletin and publish updated 2027 and 2028 term dates in the New Zealand Gazette.
The document reveals Education Minister Erica Stanford approved the change on 13 October 2025 but rejected the ministry’s suggestion to proactively release the report.
The New Zealand Gazette published the revised term dates on 16 October 2025, and the ministry updated them on its website.
The ministry said it would notify schools of the change via a February bulletin.
“To make sure that this type of error does not recur, we have created a checking tool to use alongside our existing term dates calculator. This will provide an additional check to our existing manual checking process.”