A consultation exercise will be launched in Angus to decide the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school terms and holiday dates.
Councillors on the education committee also agreed the proposal to amend the date on which schools would take the St Andrew’s Day holiday to December 2.
This alteration would ensure that school pupils and all Angus Council staff would celebrate St Andrew’s Day uniformly across the county.
Over the last two years, extensive exchanges of correspondence about school terms and holidays have taken place with neighbouring councils.
Education director Neil Logue said the clear outcome of recent exercises is that it is proving very difficult to agree a common pattern for each and every school holiday period, in particular, the October holiday.
Mr Logue said: “However, the timings of the summer holiday and the Christmas/New Year holiday are very similar to those of our neighbouring authorities.
“We have also reached an informal agreement that the spring holiday should always start on the first Monday in April.
“Aberdeenshire and Perth and Kinross councils have begun to set school terms and holidays two or more years in advance.
“It is now apparent that there is clear inconsistency between the Angus October holiday dates and those of Aberdeenshire, Perth and Kinross and Dundee, all of whose October school holidays are set up to one week later.
“While there appears to be little prospect of an absolutely uniform pattern of school holidays/terms, neighbouring councils should be given the opportunity to comment on the attached tables in accordance with standard consultation procedures.
“In 2010 the education committee agreed to the setting of school holiday dates several years in advance. Such an approach would allow parents and staff to plan with a greater degree of certainty.
“Publication of school holiday dates three to four years in advance helps reduce related anxieties sometimes expressed by individual parents and parent groups.”
The principal issues on which comment is now being sought are the precise dates of the Christmas holidays; the dates for the long weekends in February; the wish or otherwise to continue to adopt the first two weeks in October as the October school holiday fortnight; and, the dates for ‘one day’ holidays, namely St Andrew’s Day, May holiday, in-service school closure days and the extent of parental interest in future changes to the pattern of the four term school year.
Mr Logue said the St Andrew’s Day holiday (November 30) falls on a Saturday this year. As has been the case for a number of years, the St Andrew’s Day holiday invariably follows two in-service days in late November.
He said: “The 2013 holiday days and in-service days were set in August 2010. At that time, it was agreed that the St Andrew’s Day holiday would be taken on the preceding Friday (November 29).
“This would mean that Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 would be in-service days and Friday 29 taken as St Andrew’s Day. However, it has been intimated that Angus Council will now take Monday, December 2, as the St Andrew’s Day holiday.
“To accommodate this change, it is proposed to move the in-service day on November 27 to 29, with all schools taking December 2 as the St Andrew’s Day holiday.”