MessNoMore Data Tools › School Term Dates API: UK, Australia, Malaysia (JSON)

Is there an API for school term dates and school holidays?

Updated 2026-10-14 · By Wong Xian Qi

There is no single national JSON API for UK school term dates: each council publishes its own dates in its own format, and the Australian state education departments and Malaysia's Ministry of Education (KPM) do the same. The School Holidays & Term Dates API reads those official calendars for 10 UK councils plus Northern Ireland, five Australian states and every Malaysian state, and returns terms, half terms and holidays as consistent JSON with a source link on every record.

Where do school term dates come from?

In the UK, term dates come from each council's own website. They appear as an HTML table (for example East Sussex) or as a calendar feed (Falkirk publishes an iCalendar file), and data.gov.uk has some council datasets as CSV or XML. Northern Ireland publishes school holidays but not term dates. GOV.UK does publish one JSON file, bank holidays, but that is not the same as school terms.

In Australia each state publishes its own calendar: NSW (Eastern and Western divisions, with later years on a separate page), Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania. In Malaysia, KPM publishes a yearly academic calendar PDF with separate tables for Kumpulan A and Kumpulan B, listed on its academic calendar page.

Which Malaysian states follow Kumpulan A and Kumpulan B?

Kedah and Sarawak have their own calendars because the Ministry gives them some different festive holidays. Malaysian holiday records include the extra festive school holidays announced by KPM. Ask for a state by name or code (Selangor or MY-10) and you get its calendar.

How do I get school term dates as JSON?

Choose a country (GB, AU or MY), the councils or states, the school years and the record types: term, half_term, holiday or public_holiday. A year means the year a school year starts, so in the UK 2026 is 2026/27, and in Australia and Malaysia it is the 2026 school year. This request returns NSW terms and holidays for 2026 and 2027:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/messnomore~school-holidays-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"country": "AU", "regions": ["NSW"], "years": [2026, 2027], "types": ["term", "holiday"]}'

The first two of its 16 records, from a real run:

[
  {
    "country": "AU",
    "region": "New South Wales",
    "regionCode": "AU-NSW",
    "scope": "Government (state) schools. Catholic and independent schools may differ.",
    "schoolYear": "2026",
    "type": "term",
    "name": "Term 1",
    "start": "2026-02-02",
    "end": "2026-04-02",
    "days": 60,
    "derived": false,
    "notes": "School development days Tuesday 27 January to Friday 30 January; students start Monday 2 February",
    "sourceName": "NSW Department of Education",
    "sourceUrl": "https://education.nsw.gov.au/schooling/calendars/2026",
    "licence": "CC BY 4.0",
    "lastVerified": "2026-10-12"
  },
  {
    "country": "AU",
    "region": "New South Wales",
    "regionCode": "AU-NSW",
    "scope": "Government (state) schools. Catholic and independent schools may differ.",
    "schoolYear": "2026",
    "type": "holiday",
    "name": "Autumn holidays",
    "start": "2026-04-07",
    "end": "2026-04-17",
    "days": 11,
    "derived": false,
    "notes": null,
    "sourceName": "NSW Department of Education",
    "sourceUrl": "https://education.nsw.gov.au/schooling/calendars/2026",
    "licence": "CC BY 4.0",
    "lastVerified": "2026-10-12"
  }
]

The same fields come back for every publisher, even when the calendars are built differently. Falkirk has four terms a year, and some publishers, Victoria among them, list mainly term dates, so the holidays between terms are worked out and marked derived: true:

Every record also carries sourceUrl, licence and lastVerified, the last day the source was fetched and still matched. Each source is checked weekly, its dates are extracted twice and compared, and every change is reviewed before it is published. New school years appear once the publisher releases them.

How much does it cost?

Pay-per-event pricing: $0.005 per record returned, plus $0.00005 per run start, with no charge for compute time. One UK council for two school years is about 18 records, or about $0.09. The 16 NSW records above cost about $0.08. All six Australian regions for one school year are roughly 45 to 55 records (about $0.25), and all 16 Malaysian states and territories for one year are roughly 160 to 190 records (about $0.80 to $0.95). Apify Bronze, Silver and Gold subscribers get lower prices.

Which regions are covered, and what is not?

• UK: Buckinghamshire, Bracknell Forest, East Sussex, Milton Keynes, Staffordshire and Wolverhampton (England); Merthyr Tydfil and Monmouthshire (Wales); Falkirk and Renfrewshire (Scotland); Northern Ireland (holidays only). Other councils are not covered yet.
• Australia: NSW (Eastern, plus Western as AU-NSW-W), Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania.
• Malaysia: all 13 states and 3 federal territories.
• Not included: school INSET or training days, and public holidays for Australia and Malaysia. In England the dates cover community and voluntary-controlled schools, so academies, free and foundation schools may differ.

Is there a free sample dataset?

Yes. The free school term dates sample dataset on GitHub has 52 records as JSON and CSV: 2026 for New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland (CC BY 4.0), and 2026/27 for Buckinghamshire, Staffordshire and Falkirk (Open Government Licence v3.0). It is a snapshot; the API covers more regions and future years and is re-checked weekly.