Kent School Term Dates 2026/27: Ten Schools, Ten Calendars

Kent County Council publishes one set of term dates for the whole county, and not one of the ten Sevenoaks district schools we checked follows them exactly. Nine of the ten break up for the October holiday a full week before the county’s dates say. The six independent schools in the town go further and send pupils home for Christmas on 10 or 11 December, seven or eight days before the state schools finish. Between them the ten calendars also name eighteen staff training days still to come before next July, spread across fifteen separate dates, and every one of those dates is a day Kent’s own schedule counts as a school day. This page sets out the county’s determined dates for 2026/27 and 2027/28, then shows, school by school, where the local dates actually differ.

The quick answer

Kent County Council’s determined dates for 2026/27 run from Tuesday 1 September 2026 to Wednesday 21 July 2027, with the October half term on Monday 26 to Friday 30 October 2026. Those dates apply to the schools the council maintains. Academies, grammar schools and independent schools set their own, and in Sevenoaks that is almost every school: Knole Academy, Trinity School, Weald of Kent Grammar School, Sevenoaks School, Walthamstow Hall, Sevenoaks Prep, The New Beacon, Solefield and The Granville all finish Term 1 on Friday 16 October and stay shut until 2 November, which is a two-week October break rather than one. No school here has a training day between now and then, so Friday 16 October is the last day of term at those nine; Sevenoaks Primary School follows on Thursday 22 October.

Kent’s determined term dates for 2026/27

Kent runs a six-term year rather than three terms with half terms in the middle. These are the dates Kent County Council has determined for the schools it maintains, with the number of school days in each term.

The six terms come to 195 days. Pupils are required to attend for 190 of them, and the other five are the training days schools take out of that total, which is why almost every school in the district publishes a calendar that is a few days shorter than the county’s at both ends.

The October half term is two weeks at nine of the ten schools

This is the difference worth knowing about before you book anything. Kent’s determined holiday is the single week of 26 to 30 October. Nine of the ten schools whose calendars we checked end Term 1 on Friday 16 October instead, and none of them reopens to pupils before Monday 2 November.

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The three state secondaries get there by different routes. Knole Academy puts three staff development days back to back on 19, 20 and 21 October, immediately before the county holiday. Trinity School simply publishes its October half term as “19th Oct 2026 - 30th Oct 2026”. Weald of Kent Grammar School ends Term 1 on 16 October and then makes Monday 2 November an INSET day as well, so its students are off until Tuesday 3 November, the longest October break of the eleven calendars here. All six of the town’s independent schools publish the two-week break outright, either as 19 to 30 October or as Saturday 17 October to Sunday 1 November, which is the same thing.

Sevenoaks Primary School is the one school in this group that stays close to Kent’s pattern, and even it does not match: Term 1 ends on Thursday 22 October, Friday 23 October is a staff development day, and pupils return on 2 November.

Six Sevenoaks schools break up for Christmas on 10 December

The October difference is the one families notice. The December one is bigger, and nobody publishes it side by side. Kent’s Term 2 ends on Friday 18 December, with Trinity finishing that day at 1.30pm and Weald of Kent at 12.30pm. The six independent schools in the town all finish a week or more earlier: Sevenoaks School at 1pm on Thursday 10 December, The New Beacon at 4pm the same day, Solefield on the 10th as a half day, The Granville on the 10th, and Walthamstow Hall and Sevenoaks Prep at midday on Friday 11 December. A household with a child at each will have one at home for a full week of the Christmas run-up while the other is still in lessons.

Those six move almost as one. Five of them start the autumn term on Thursday 3 September and Sevenoaks School starts on the Friday; all six take the same two-week October break; all six end the spring term on Wednesday 24 March, a day before the county; and all six are back on Monday 7 June after the May holiday. Part of the reason is on the record: Solefield’s own website says the school is a member of the Sevenoaks Family of Schools and is legally part of Sevenoaks School.

Every training day still to come this year

Training days are the closures families miss, because they are not clustered at the ends of terms and no two schools here take them on the same pattern. Every date below falls on a day Kent County Council’s own calendar counts as a school day. Where a school shuts on a Monday or a Friday next to a holiday, the effect is a long weekend that the county’s schedule gives no warning of.

Knole Academy takes seven of the eighteen, more than any other school here, and its three in a row from 19 October are the next on any calendar in this group. (Its eighth, on Monday 21 September, has passed.) It is also the only school that publishes none at all in one of its terms: Term 5, from 12 April to 28 May, has no staff development day on its calendar. Monday 12 April is the one date three schools close on together.

The autumn term at the state schools

Kent’s Term 1 began on Tuesday 1 September. Only one of the schools below opened to pupils that day, and the rest staggered their starts through the first week.

Both secondaries staggered the first week, and in the same way. Trinity took Tuesday 1 September as an INSET day, brought Years 7 and 12 in on the Wednesday and had the whole school together on Thursday 3 September. Weald of Kent had Years 7, 10 and 12 in school on Thursday 3 September while Years 8, 9, 11 and 13 worked online that day, and was not together until Friday 4 September.

Sevenoaks School also runs Saturday school, which is why its calendar names the Saturdays it does not. There are six exeat Saturdays this year, on 26 September, 21 November, 23 January, 6 March, 1 May and 22 May, and Founder’s Day falls on Saturday 3 July.

The rest of the 2026/27 year, school by school

The differences narrow after Christmas, but they do not disappear, and the widest gap of the whole year is in April.

• January. Kent’s Term 3 starts Monday 4 January 2027. Knole Academy and Weald of Kent both start that day, Weald taking its next INSET on Monday 18 January. Trinity, Walthamstow Hall, Sevenoaks Prep, The New Beacon and The Granville all start on Tuesday 5 January, with Trinity and Walthamstow Hall both taking the Monday as an INSET day. Solefield starts on Wednesday 6 January and Sevenoaks School begins its Lent term at 8.30am on Thursday 7 January, three days after the county.
• February. This is the one holiday in the year where every calendar here agrees. The week of 15 to 19 February is a holiday at all ten schools, and all ten have pupils back on Monday 22 February. Knole ends Term 3 on Thursday 11 February and uses the Friday as a staff development day; Sevenoaks School, The New Beacon and Solefield start their half term from the Friday or the Saturday.
• Easter. Kent’s Term 4 ends Thursday 25 March 2027 and the holiday runs to Friday 9 April, with Good Friday on 26 March and Easter Monday on 29 March both falling inside it. All six independent schools end a day earlier, on Wednesday 24 March, Sevenoaks School and Solefield at 1pm and lunchtime respectively.
• April, the widest gap of the year. Kent’s Term 5 starts Monday 12 April. Walthamstow Hall goes back on Tuesday 13 April, Sevenoaks School on Wednesday 14 April, The New Beacon on Thursday 15 April, Sevenoaks Prep and The Granville on Tuesday 20 April and Solefield on Wednesday 21 April. That is a nine-day spread on one date, and it makes Solefield’s Easter holiday, from 24 March to 21 April, nearly four weeks off, against seventeen days at the county’s schools.
• Summer. Kent’s year ends Wednesday 21 July 2027. Walthamstow Hall finishes first of all ten, at midday on Friday 2 July, twenty days before Knole Academy’s 22 July. Sevenoaks School ends on Founder’s Day, Saturday 3 July, and The New Beacon, Solefield and Sevenoaks Prep all finish on Wednesday 7 July, with New Beacon’s Year 8 leaving after chapel on the 2nd. The Granville runs to Friday 9 July. Of the state schools, Weald of Kent finishes earliest at 12.30pm on Friday 16 July, Trinity teaches to Monday 19 July and takes Tuesday 20 July as an INSET day, and Knole runs to Thursday 22 July, a day beyond the county date.

Bank holidays in the 2026/27 school year

Kent lists nine bank holidays across the year. Eight of them fall in a school holiday and cost nothing, so there is only one bank holiday closure inside the 2026/27 school year: Monday 3 May 2027, the early May bank holiday, which lands in the middle of Term 5.

• 31 August 2026, summer holiday
• 25 December 2026, 28 December 2026 and 1 January 2027, Christmas holiday
• 26 March 2027 (Good Friday) and 29 March 2027 (Easter Monday), Easter holiday
• 3 May 2027, in Term 5: schools are shut
• 31 May 2027, the first day of the May half term
• 30 August 2027, summer holiday

One caution if you are working from the county’s own PDF: it prints the Term 5 bank holiday as “3/05/2026”. The correct date is Monday 3 May 2027, which is the one the calendar grid on the second page of that document shows.

Kent term dates for 2027/28

Kent has already determined the following year, which is what you need if you are booking a long way ahead. The autumn looks much like 2026/27, but the spring is redistributed, because Easter 2028 is late: Good Friday falls on 14 April. Term 4 grows from 24 school days to 30 and Term 5 shrinks from 34 to 28, the reverse of this year.

Five local schools have published that year as well, and every one of them does the same thing again. Knole Academy ends Term 1 on Friday 15 October 2027, a week before the county’s 22 October, and takes four staff development days on 26, 27, 28 and 29 October. Trinity School publishes its October 2027 half term as 18 to 29 October. Walthamstow Hall and Sevenoaks Prep both give it as 18 to 29 October too, and Solefield as Saturday 16 to Sunday 31 October. Those three independents also break up for Christmas 2027 on 9 or 10 December, again a week before the county’s 17 December. So the two-week October break is not a one-off for any of them, and if you book an autumn 2027 holiday on the county’s dates you will be a week out at five schools. Weald of Kent, Sevenoaks Primary, The New Beacon and The Granville have not published 2027/28 yet.

How to check your own school’s dates

• Start with the school’s own website. Every school in the district publishes its term dates, usually under “Parents”, “School Life” or “Key dates”, and that page is the one that governs, not the county’s.
• If you cannot find it, Kent County Council’s school search gives contact details for every school in the county.
• Check the training days specifically, using the table above. They are the closures most often missed, and several of them sit on the first or last day of a county term, which is exactly when a parent assumes school is on.
• At the independent schools, read the term start dates rather than hunting for INSET days. Most of them do not publish staff days separately; the days are already absorbed into a later start, which is why five of the six begin the summer term between two and nine days after the county does.
• Weald of Kent publishes its dates only in a PDF, and the table printed on its own term dates page is still last year’s. Open the linked 2026/27 file rather than reading the page.
• Do not rely on the third-party term date aggregators. Several of them repeat Kent’s determined dates for schools that publish something different, which is exactly how a family ends up at the school gate on a training day.

If you are choosing a secondary school rather than just marking the calendar, Sevenoaks secondary school places sets out the five separate application deadlines, the first of which is 7 October. Once you have your dates, the October half term guide covers what is open locally in the break, and there is more in things to do with kids in Sevenoaks and the days out near Sevenoaks round-up.

Frequently asked questions

When is October half term 2026 in Kent?

Kent County Council’s half term is Monday 26 to Friday 30 October 2026. Nine of the ten Sevenoaks schools we checked break a week earlier, on Friday 16 October, and do not reopen to pupils until 2 November or later: Knole Academy, Trinity School, Weald of Kent Grammar School, Sevenoaks School, Walthamstow Hall, Sevenoaks Prep, The New Beacon, Solefield and The Granville.

Do Sevenoaks private schools have a two-week October half term?

Yes, all six of them. Sevenoaks School, Walthamstow Hall, Sevenoaks Prep, The New Beacon, Solefield and The Granville all publish an October break that runs from Friday 16 October to Sunday 1 November, and all six are back on Monday 2 November.

When do Sevenoaks schools break up for Christmas 2026?

The state schools finish on Friday 18 December 2026, Trinity at 1.30pm and Weald of Kent at 12.30pm. The independent schools finish a week or more earlier: Sevenoaks School at 1pm on Thursday 10 December, The New Beacon at 4pm the same day, Solefield at lunchtime on the 10th and The Granville on the 10th, then Walthamstow Hall and Sevenoaks Prep at midday on Friday 11 December.

When are the INSET days at Sevenoaks schools in 2026/27?

Eighteen are still to come, on fifteen dates. The next is Knole Academy’s block of 19, 20 and 21 October, which runs straight into the half term. After that come Sevenoaks Primary School on 23 October, Weald of Kent on 2 November, Knole again on 6 November, then Trinity and Walthamstow Hall on 4 January, Weald on 18 January, Knole on 12 February and 12 March, Weald on 17 March, Sevenoaks Primary, Sevenoaks School and Walthamstow Hall all on 12 April, Sevenoaks Primary on 28 May, Knole on 9 July and Trinity on 20 July.

Why do Kent schools have six terms instead of three?

Kent County Council determines a six-term year rather than three terms split by half terms. It is the same total, 195 days for teachers and 190 for pupils, described differently: Terms 1 and 2 are the autumn, 3 and 4 the spring, 5 and 6 the summer.

Do academies have to follow Kent County Council’s term dates?

No. The council determines dates for the schools it maintains. Academies, grammar schools that have converted, and independent schools set their own, and Kent’s own term dates page says term dates for some schools may be different and tells parents to contact the school.

How many bank holidays fall in the 2026/27 school year?

Nine are listed, but eight of them fall inside a school holiday. Only Monday 3 May 2027 closes schools during term time.

When are the school summer holidays in Kent in 2027?

Kent’s Term 6 ends on Wednesday 21 July 2027 and the holiday runs to Tuesday 31 August 2027, with the 2027/28 year starting on Wednesday 1 September 2027. Individual schools finish on very different days: Walthamstow Hall at midday on Friday 2 July, Weald of Kent Grammar School at 12.30pm on Friday 16 July, and Knole Academy on Thursday 22 July.

Sources

• Kent County Council, term dates (the determined dates, holiday periods and bank holidays)
• Kent County Council, Determined School Term dates for 2026-27 (PDF: school days per term, the 190 and 195 day rule, bank holiday list)
• Kent County Council, Determined School Term dates for 2027-28 (PDF)
• Knole Academy, term dates and school holidays (2026/27 and 2027/28 staff development days)
• Trinity School, Sevenoaks, term dates (2026/27 and 2027/28 INSET days and the staggered September start)
• Weald of Kent Grammar School, term dates (2026/27 dates and INSET days are in the linked PDF)
• Sevenoaks Primary School, term dates 2026/2027
• Sevenoaks School, key dates (term dates, staff days and exeat Saturdays)
• Walthamstow Hall, term dates (2026/27 and 2027/28 dates and INSET days)
• Sevenoaks Preparatory School, term dates
• The New Beacon, term dates
• Solefield School, term dates (2026/27 and 2027/28, and the school’s link to Sevenoaks School)
• The Granville School, term dates

Every date on this page was read from the county’s schedule or the school’s own calendar on 19 September 2026, and Knole Academy’s was checked again on 3 October 2026. Schools do move training days during the year, so confirm with your own school before you book anything that cannot be changed.