School holidays in Australian capital cities from 2004 to 2023

A dataset indicating which days from 2004 to 2022 are school holidays in the eight Australian capital cities (Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney). This applies to urban, government school students. The dataset is attached in both .txt format and .rda format.

Each observation represent a date and city. schoolhols is a binary variable (1 if the day occurs during the school holidays, 0 during the school term). school.hols is a factor variable which is 0 if the day occurs during the school term, 1 during the first school holiday period (the first after commencing the school year), 2 during the second, 3 during the third and 4 during the fourth (the summer break). Tasmania prior to 2013 had three instead of four official school terms; where this applies, the Easter break is treated as the first school holiday period (this break was generally longer than usual for school students), with subsequent holiday periods being denoted as the second, third and fourth holiday periods, respectively.

The data for each city was manually collected and combined from the state and territory government webpages included in the references. For any queries regarding this dataset, please do not hesitate to contact the author: matthew.borg@adelaide.edu.au.