As the summer school holidays approach, the 2024-2025 vacation calendar reveals that some French people will have more chances than others.
While the summer holidays will begin on Saturday July 6, the 2024/2025 school vacation calendar is already available! The new school year will begin on Monday September 2. As usual, the dates of the All Saints’ Day holidays (October 19 to November 3) and Christmas (December 21 to January 5) are common to the three zones. Conversely, the winter and spring holidays are staggered. Each year, the order of the zones changes so that it is not always the same one which goes first or last. And these small variations sometimes provide small welcome advantages…
For 2024/2025, zone B (academies of Aix-Marseille, Amiens, Caen, Lille, Nancy-Metz, Nantes, Nice, Orléans-Tours, Reims, Rennes, Rouen and Strasbourg) will begin with holidays running from February 8 to 23 and April 5 to 20. It will be followed by zone C (Créteil, Montpellier, Paris, Toulouse and Versailles) from February 15 to March 2 and from April 12 to 27. Finally, zone A (Besançon, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon, Grenoble, Limoges, Lyon and Poitiers) will end the school holiday period, with winter holidays from February 22 to March 9 and spring holidays from 19 April to May 4. Everyone will then continue classes until July 5.
In addition to these holiday dates, there will be some bridges or long weekends with public holidays. The 2024/2025 school year will be a good year for fans of long weekends. November 1st will, in fact, fall on a Friday just like August 15th. November 11 will also allow for a long weekend since it will be a Monday, as will July 14. Less luck for Christmas and New Year which will be in the middle of the week, on Wednesday. May 1st and May 8th fall on Thursdays. It will be necessary to add those which have fixed days such as the traditional Ascension Thursday (May 29), accompanied by a bridge, and the Mondays of Pentecost (June 9) and Easter (April 21).
This last date will also be very popular with one of the three zones. Easter Monday will fall the day after the end of the spring holidays in zone B. She will thus be able to benefit from an additional day of rest and the students will not return to school until Tuesday, April 22. Conversely, zone A sees Easter Monday as well as May 1st falling during the spring break. No bonus for young people from Bordeaux, Lyon or other Clermontois!
Zone B will also have only 5 weeks of classes between the Christmas and winter holidays compared to 6 or 7 for the other two. If there will be six weeks between the winter and spring holidays for everyone, the period will however be much longer for zone B between the spring holidays and the summer with no less than 10 consecutive weeks to finish the school year. One last marathon on the road to summer vacation…