Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of taking steps to grant local authorities greater flexibility in setting school term dates.

Local authorities already have responsibility for setting term dates for schools where they are the employer, including community schools, community special schools, voluntary controlled schools, pupil referral units and maintained nursery schools. These will be set in line with the requirements set out in the Education (School Day and School Year) (England) Regulations 1999.