INSET days 2026-27: who decides and how to find yours

England: five days, chosen by the school

The Education (School Day and School Year) (England) Regulations 1999 require at least 380 sessions a year, two per day. Teachers' contracts allow 195 working days. The five days between the two numbers are the INSET days. In community and voluntary controlled schools the council sets the term dates, but not the INSET days: each head teacher places them, often next to a half term or at the start of September. Kent, for example, publishes a year of 195 days in six terms and states that pupils attend 190, each school naming its own five non-contact days.

Some schools convert the five days into "disaggregated" training: a number of after-school sessions adding up to the same hours, within the 1,265 hours of directed time. Pupils then lose no day at all.

Every council, its INSET rule

Scotland: in-service days on the council calendar

Scottish councils publish in-service days with the term dates. They often open the new school year with in-service days in mid-August and place others next to the breaks. Among the councils on this site, Aberdeenshire lists 5, Edinburgh lists 5, Fife lists 5, Glasgow lists 5, Highland lists 5, North Lanarkshire lists 5, South Lanarkshire lists 5. Because each council chooses its own, the same week can be a school week in one council and an in-service day in the next.

Wales and Northern Ireland

Some Welsh councils on this site name a designated INSET day on 1 September and leave the others to schools; Carmarthenshire notes that the Welsh Government intends to keep a sixth INSET day, and Neath Port Talbot already warns of up to six. Northern Ireland schools must open on 200 days and can use up to 10 of them as school development days, when pupils stay at home; each school announces its own. In 2026-27 the Department of Education added three closure days for the TransformED reform programme: 25 September 2026, 25 January 2027 and 4 May 2027.

How the checker handles INSET days

The "is school open?" checker on this site marks the in-service days a council fixes as days without school. For English councils that leave INSET days to schools, it cannot know them: it marks the day as a school day on the council calendar and says that your school may still use it for training. If the school has given you its list, compare it with the checker before booking anything.