Source: Radio New Zealand
The Education Ministry had forgotten to allow for the Matariki holiday in its 2027 term date calculations, almost cutting the year a day short. RNZ / Richard Tindiller
An Education Ministry error nearly cut the 2027 school year short by a single day.
An Education Ministry document supplied to RNZ under the Official Information Act said schools were supposed to be open for at least 380 “half-days” each year.
But the ministry forgot to allow for the Matariki holiday in its 2027 term date calculations, the report to Education Minister Erica Stanford said.
“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 said leaving the dates unchanged was not a good idea.
“ln 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 said the only option for fixing the term dates was to shift the latest starting date for term 1 from Thursday 4 February to Wednesday 3 February.
The report asked the minister to approve the change by 11 June 2025.
It said the ministry would alert schools through its School Bulletin and publish a new notice setting the 2027 and 2028 school term dates in the official government journal, the New Zealand Gazette.
The document showed Stanford agreed to the change on 13 October 2025, but she disagreed with the ministry’s recommendation that the report be proactively published.
The New Zealand Gazette published the revised term dates on 16 October 2025 and the ministry updated the term dates listed on its website.
The ministry told RNZ it would alert schools to the change in a bulletin to schools in February.
The ministry’s report said it had ensured similar mistakes would not happen in future.
“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.”
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand