You are here:
Ending the school day early
Understand the rules on ending the school day early and who is responsible for your pupils during early closures. See examples of schools that close early on certain days.
Contents
Closing school early
In certain circumstances, you may wish to send your pupils home early. For example:
- At the end of term
- For parents' evening
The rules on closing your school early differ for maintained schools and academies.
Maintained schools
You must meet for at least 380 sessions or 190 days during any school year to educate your pupils.
Every school day must have 2 sessions, divided by a break. The governing board decides the length of:
- The school day
- Breaks
- Sessions
This is outlined in the DfE's school attendance guidance (page 17).
You're still required to have 2 teaching sessions even if you shorten the school day. It doesn't matter how long the sessions are. A session of any length counts towards the 380 sessions for the year.
That means teachers could take the register at the beginning of the afternoon session and then send pupils home.
The DfE confirmed this to us.
Academies
More from The Key
Bitesize training with a big impact
Our on-demand training has your whole board covered and lets them learn at a time and pace that suits them.
Help your new governors hit the ground running with our expertly-designed induction training, and our role-specific courses support your link governors develop key skills and confidence in their role.
New eLearning: DSL refresher training
Your DSL’s training should be refreshed at least once every 2 years.
Designed in collaboration with safeguarding experts, our 2.5 hour online refresher training course reminds DSLs how to put their knowledge into practice, with in-depth, real-world scenarios.
- Need-to-know: DfE publishes new statutory guidance on the cost of school uniform 19 Nov 2021 08:51
- Need-to-know: STPCD 2021 published 4 Oct 2021 10:30
- In the news: Your weekly round-up for 20 to 27 August 2021 27 Aug 2021 08:00
- In the news: Your weekly round-up for 6 to 13 August 2021 13 Aug 2021 08:00
- In the news: Your weekly round-up for 30 July to 6 August 2021 6 Aug 2021 08:00
The Key has taken great care in publishing this article. However, some of the article's content and information may come from or link to third party sources whose quality, relevance, accuracy, completeness, currency and reliability we do not guarantee. Accordingly, we will not be held liable for any use of or reliance placed on this article's content or the links or downloads it provides. This article may contain information sourced from public sector bodies and licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.