How we check savings

A window counts as a hidden win only when one of the ways to save that we price-tested applies to your school's dates: inset days that let you leave before a holiday or stay on after it, a long weekend from inset days in term time, a summer holiday that starts before most schools', an autumn term that starts after most schools', or holiday days in a week when most schools are open.

An ordinary school holiday that most schools share is a safe bet. If everyone already has that time off, we haven't found you anything — so we don't dress it up as a discovery, and we don't show a saving for it.

"Most schools" means the majority of 33 English local authority calendars for council-maintained schools, which we checked on 11 October 2026.

A holiday day counts as being "in a week when most schools are open" when fewer than 15% of the 150 or so English councils with published dates for that year are on holiday that day. We count councils, not pupils.

Between 7 and 12 October 2026 we checked real prices, mostly for 2027 dates. For each way to save, we priced the same booking on both dates — the inset-day date and the holiday date a family would otherwise use — keeping the same lodge, room or airline wherever we could.

• Who: a family of 2 adults and 2 children (aged 4 and 7).
• What you see: a band across the operators and airports we tested, for your holiday — for example "54–62% less" before February half-term — rounded, not a quote. The headline on each window is the top of the best band tested for your holiday; where the best finding has no percentage (such as cheaper extra nights), the headline says that in words instead. The full band, the details and the conditions are listed underneath.
• Where we found no saving, we say so. Each window has a "Where an inset day doesn’t help" list — for example, parks that only start breaks on Fridays or Mondays, where a Friday inset day changes nothing.
• Not yet tested: if we haven't checked an option for your holiday (for example flights before October half-term, which weren't on sale yet), we say so rather than borrow a number from another holiday.

We don't publish the full list of searches or the raw prices. Prices change, so always compare your own dates before you book.

Published guides showing the same pattern

Independent guides describe holiday-park prices rising and falling with school holiday dates, which is the pattern our checks measure.

Many holiday parks close over Christmas, so options that weren't open then aren't offered for Christmas windows. Where your school's first day back in January is a Monday inset day, the savings we found are for staying on to that Monday — for example flying home on the Monday rather than the Sunday.

Christmas holiday cottages were fully booked a year ahead when we checked, so if you want one, look early.

Every day we show carries one of three classifications. They describe your child's attendance status — nothing else.

• Green — genuinely authorised

  An inset day, weekend, half-term, bank holiday or normal school holiday. No permission needed, no fine risk.
• Amber — term-time absence

  A school day you'd be asking to take. Requires your head teacher's permission and carries fine risk. Always labelled, never hidden inside a total.
• Grey — a normal school day

  Outside the window. Shown for context only.

The tool works from real school-published term dates and inset days, parsed from the source the school actually publishes — council pages, individual school sites, HTML tables and PDF newsletters alike.

That parsing has been stress-tested against a deliberately messy, wide range of real school websites in England: different councils, different formats, inconsistent date styles, and PDFs of varying quality. Cases where dates were being misread were caught and fixed against those real sources rather than tidy test data.

If a school's page can't be read reliably, the tool says so and asks you to confirm the dates, rather than guessing and quietly returning a wrong window.

Where an edge case is genuinely ambiguous, we resolve it against ourselves. We would rather under-claim and be trusted than over-claim and be right occasionally.

• An inset day falling after the summer holiday has already started doesn't count as unlocking a hidden saving — everyone gets that time off regardless, so it earns no credit.
• Conditions such as "closed over Christmas" or "only before Easter" are shown with each option, so you can see why there's no figure for your holiday.
• Where we tested an option for specific holidays, we only use the figure for your holiday. If we haven't tested it for your holiday, it's listed as "not yet tested" and never used for the headline — even if it saved money at another holiday.
• Bank holidays that already sit inside a school holiday aren't counted twice as extra authorised days.
• A window is only ranked as a hidden win if one of the ways to save we tested applies to it — everything else is a safe bet with no saving shown.