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INSET days, also called training days, staff development days or teacher days, are the days when a school is open for staff but closed to pupils. For parents, they are often the hardest part of the school calendar to plan for, because they are not on the council’s published term dates and they vary from school to school.

This guide explains where INSET days come from, who decides when they fall, and how to find your school’s dates as early as possible.

Where the five days come from

Teachers in council-maintained schools are employed under the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document. It requires a full-time teacher to be available for work on 195 days a year, of which 190 are days on which they may be required to teach pupils. The remaining five days are for other work: training, planning, assessment, curriculum development and similar tasks. Those are the INSET days. The arrangement dates back to 1987, which is why some people still call them Baker days. Our short history of INSET days explains how that came about.

Academies that do not follow the national pay and conditions document set their own arrangements, but most still have a similar number of non-pupil days.

Who decides when they fall?

The council sets term dates for community and voluntary controlled schools. In most areas, the school then decides where its five INSET days go, within those terms. Academies, free schools, foundation and voluntary aided schools set both their term dates and their INSET days.

Some councils do fix one or more INSET days for their schools. The published 2027/28 dates on this site include several examples:

  • Warwickshire sets Wednesday 1 September 2027 and Wednesday 5 January 2028 as teacher training days, leaving schools to choose the others.
  • Staffordshire fixes Thursday 2 September 2027 as an INSET day, with pupils starting on Friday 3 September.
  • Bracknell Forest and Warrington both list 1 September 2027 as an INSET day set by the council.

Others take the opposite approach. Leicestershire states that it no longer sets INSET days, and Rutland notes that schools set all five themselves. This is why two schools a mile apart can be closed on different days even when they follow the same council calendar.

Common patterns

Schools have reasons for where they put their training days, and some patterns come up often enough to be useful when you are planning:

  • The start of the autumn term. Many schools use the first one or two days of September to prepare for the year. Staff are expected to receive safeguarding training when they join and regular updates afterwards, and the start of the year is a common time for that.
  • Next to a holiday. A Monday after a half term, or a Friday before one, is a popular choice, because it disrupts the run of teaching less than a day in the middle of a week. For parents, it means the holiday is effectively a day longer.
  • Shared days between schools. Some schools in the same trust or local partnership use the same INSET day for joint training. Where a primary and a secondary work closely together, their days may line up, but that is a local arrangement rather than a rule.
  • Disaggregated days. Some schools split INSET days into twilight sessions after school instead of closing for a full day, which means fewer closures for families.

How to find your school’s dates early

  • Check the school’s website. Many schools publish INSET days with their term dates, often a year ahead. If the dates are not listed, ask the school office; they are often decided well before they are published.
  • Check your council’s term dates page. If your council sets some INSET days, they will be listed there. Your local authority page links to the council source.
  • Look at previous years. Schools tend to repeat the same approach from year to year, for example always closing on the first day of September. Last year’s calendar is a reasonable guide, but not a guarantee.
  • If you have children at different schools, compare them. Different schools in the same area will rarely choose all the same days. Our guide to why schools have different dates explains the wider picture.

INSET days and absence

INSET days do not count as absence, because the school is closed to pupils. The reverse is worth knowing too: if a school is open and your child is not, an INSET day at a sibling’s school is not a reason the school can accept for absence, so it is usually recorded as unauthorised.

When I was teaching, the first INSET day of September was always the busiest day of the year for staff, and the day parents most often forgot. If you only check one date, check that one.

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