When are school holidays 2021

Before the start of each school year, school­child­ren and their par­ents are most con­cerned about the ques­tion of how much rest they will have dur­ing the school peri­od. In our mate­r­i­al, we have col­lect­ed for you all the infor­ma­tion about the school vaca­tion plan­ning scheme with approx­i­mate dates, so that you can start plan­ning fam­i­ly trips and oth­er events based on this data.

General rules for planning school holidays

Regard­less of the type of sec­ondary edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion, all schools in Rus­sia adhere to the gen­er­al rules for orga­niz­ing vaca­tions.

• School hol­i­days should always start on Mon­day.

• Hol­i­days must be at least 7 cal­en­dar days.

• The amount of vaca­tion days in a year must be at least 30 cal­en­dar days. This cal­cu­la­tion does not include sum­mer hol­i­days that last at least 2 full months. Prac­tices and final exams are allowed in June.

• Schools are pro­hib­it­ed from post­pon­ing vaca­tions more than 2 weeks ahead or back from those rec­om­mend­ed by the Russ­ian Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. If the trans­fer is planned with­in a two-week win­dow, then all par­tic­i­pants in the edu­ca­tion­al process (school­child­ren, par­ents, teach­ers) must be noti­fied in advance.

At the same time, schools have per­son­al auton­o­my and can deter­mine the dates of their hol­i­days inde­pen­dent­ly, depend­ing on the cur­ricu­lum of the insti­tu­tion.

Why can holidays be held at different times in different schools?

In Rus­sia, schools are allowed to work on two dif­fer­ent sys­tems — semes­ter and trimester. Schools can choose which sys­tem they work on, and vaca­tion dates depend on this.

The semes­ter sys­tem is a clas­sic approach to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the aca­d­e­m­ic year known to us since the days of the Sovi­et Union. With the semes­ter sys­tem, the aca­d­e­m­ic seg­ment is called a quar­ter. Accord­ing­ly, 4 quar­ters pass in a year. Such a sys­tem is called semes­ter because, for the con­ve­nience of report­ing, quar­ters are com­bined into semes­ters.

Quar­ters in schools last a dif­fer­ent num­ber of days, so the hol­i­days do not come at the same inter­val. For exam­ple, the sec­ond and fourth quar­ters are con­sid­ered the short­est and last 7 weeks, while the third lasts as much as 11 weeks.

Most edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions in our coun­try, accord­ing to the clas­sics, pre­fer the semes­ter sys­tem.

The trimester sys­tem of school­ing came to Rus­sia rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, but has already man­aged to win the love of many pro­gres­sive schools. In the trimester sys­tem, the year is divid­ed into three equal parts. One trimester is two mod­ules of 5 weeks each, between which hol­i­days are laid.

From the point of view of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of study time, the trimester sys­tem seems to be more con­ve­nient for school­child­ren, since vaca­tions always come at reg­u­lar inter­vals. The quar­ters in this regard are not so thought out, because after one long quar­ter the child may be very exhaust­ed, and after a short one he may still not want to go on vaca­tion.

The pho­to below shows edu­ca­tion­al cal­en­dars for schools.

Cal­en­dar for the semes­ter edu­ca­tion sys­tem:

Cal­en­dar for the trimester train­ing sys­tem:

Approximate dates for autumn holidays

Regard­less of which sys­tem the school oper­ates under, the school year in 2021 will begin on Sep­tem­ber 1.

For those who study under the semes­ter scheme, the first quar­ter will last 8 full weeks of autumn. After that, the autumn hol­i­days will be held approx­i­mate­ly from 25 to 31 Octo­ber.

In schools with trimesters, the first trimester of autumn will be divid­ed into two mod­ules, respec­tive­ly, chil­dren will have two autumn hol­i­days. The first will be held from 4 to 10 Octo­ber, and the sec­ond — from 15 to 21 Novem­ber.

Approximate dates for winter holidays

Win­ter hol­i­days for school­child­ren are tra­di­tion­al­ly the longest (besides sum­mer hol­i­days), since they coin­cide with the New Year hol­i­days.

For schools with a semes­ter sys­tem, they will begin on Decem­ber 27 after the sec­ond term, which will last only eight weeks. Win­ter hol­i­days will last 14 cal­en­dar days and end on Jan­u­ary 9, 2022.

Many schools after the clas­sic win­ter break have an addi­tion­al Feb­ru­ary break for first graders and ele­men­tary school stu­dents. They are held in mid-Feb­ru­ary from the 7th to the 13th. Such hol­i­days in Feb­ru­ary are made so that the longest third quar­ter is eas­i­er for first-graders. In addi­tion, Feb­ru­ary is tra­di­tion­al­ly con­sid­ered the peri­od of the spread of infec­tious dis­eases (SARS and influen­za), so addi­tion­al hol­i­days help reduce the per­cent­age of school­child­ren mor­bid­i­ty.

In schools with a trimester sys­tem of edu­ca­tion, the dates of the win­ter hol­i­days coin­cide with the dates of schools that study in quar­ters, since this is the time of the win­ter hol­i­days and the dates are uni­fied for the whole coun­try. In Feb­ru­ary 2022, all school­child­ren of the trimester sys­tem will have a sec­ond win­ter vaca­tion from Feb­ru­ary 14 to Feb­ru­ary 20.

Estimated dates for spring break

Before the spring break at school, all chil­dren will have two fes­tive peri­ods, timed to coin­cide with the hol­i­days on Feb­ru­ary 23 and March 8 (from March 5 to 8). Schools with a semes­ter sys­tem will go on vaca­tion from 21 to 27 March.

Schools with a trimester sys­tem of edu­ca­tion will go on vaca­tion from 4 to 10 April. For chil­dren, this will be the final school hol­i­days before the sum­mer.

Approximate summer vacation dates

In all Russ­ian schools, the aca­d­e­m­ic year ends on the same day. In the 2021–2022 aca­d­e­m­ic year, it will be May 25th. After that, school­child­ren go on sum­mer hol­i­days, which will last until Sep­tem­ber 1.

It is impor­tant to note that in some schools for chil­dren there is a sum­mer prac­tice, which post­pones the sum­mer hol­i­days by 1–2 weeks. But it is not nec­es­sary to attend the prac­tice, and if your fam­i­ly has plans for the first weeks of June, then you can refuse to attend school dur­ing this peri­od.

A lit­tle lat­er, the sum­mer hol­i­days will begin for school­child­ren of the final grades (9th and 11th), because after the last bell they are still wait­ing for final exams. Exam dates are deter­mined indi­vid­u­al­ly by each school.

Read even more use­ful infor­ma­tion on how to pre­pare for school in our blog, for exam­ple, check out the arti­cle “How to choose a back­pack for a teenag­er to school.”