Kerala Government Announces Revised Academic Calendar for 2025-26 School Year

Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala State Government has issued an order detailing a revised academic calendar for the 2025-26 school year. The changes, prompted by High Court directives and recommendations from an expert committee, aim to ensure compliance with the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, and Kerala Education Rules (KER) regarding instructional hours and working days.

The government's decision follows a series of writ petitions filed in the High Court concerning the academic calendar. In response, the Principal Secretary of the General Education Department conducted a hearing on September 9, 2024, involving petitioners, education experts, child psychologists, teacher and student organizations, and PTA-SMC representatives. Subsequently, an expert committee was formed to study the matter and submit a report.

The expert committee's report, along with opinions from the Director of General Education, formed the basis for the government's order. The primary goal is to meet the mandated instructional hours and working days for different school sections.

Here's a breakdown of the key changes:

For Lower Primary (Classes 1-4):

Schools will have 198 working days.
This is to ensure the required 800 instructional hours as per the RTE Act.

For Upper Primary (Classes 5-7):

Class 5 will have 200 working days.
Classes 6 and 7 will also have 200 working days to achieve 1000 instructional hours. This means, in addition to the 198 standard working days, two Saturdays (ensuring no six-day week is continuous) will be designated as working days for these classes.
The RTE Act stipulates 220 working days and 1000 instructional hours for classes 6 to 8. However, the new order adjusts the working days to 200 for classes 5-7 to meet the required instructional hours at a rate of 5 hours per day

For High School (Classes 8-10):

Class 8 will adhere to the RTE Act's requirement of 220 working days.
Classes 9 and 10 will follow the KER, also requiring 220 working days.
This will provide 1100 instructional hours.
To achieve this, six Saturdays (ensuring no six-day week is continuous) will be working days.
Additionally, on regular working days (excluding Fridays), instructional time will be increased by 30 minutes daily. This will be split into 15 minutes in the morning session and 15 minutes in the afternoon session. This additional time will be distributed proportionally across the existing 8 periods.
Fridays will maintain their existing schedule (9:30 AM to 4:30 PM) without these changes.

Expert Committee Recommendations Incorporated:

The government has considered these recommendations in formulating the final order for the 2025-26 academic year. The Director of SCERT and the Chief Executive Officer of KITE have been instructed to publish this order on their websites.

You can download the official circular here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KQ9heLQzsC0q75SdC4FhlGXS4-LuOn64/view?usp=sharing