Academic Calendar • India • CBSE, ICSE, IB and Cambridge
When Does the Academic Session Start in India?
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) mandates that every affiliated school's academic session runs 1 April to 31 March nationally. It does not mandate when a school actually closes for summer, closes for winter, or reopens after either break; that is decided state by state, and in some hill regions, month by month. This is a sourced, board-by-board and region-by-region breakdown of how session start dates, summer vacations, and winter vacations actually work across CBSE, ICSE, IB, and Cambridge schools in India.
CBSE Sets the Session Year. It Does Not Set the Reopening Date.
CBSE Circular Aff-07/2023, dated 17 March 2023, directs every affiliated school to refrain from starting a new academic session before 1 April and to run the session strictly from 1 April to 31 March. The Board's stated reason was that schools starting early were compressing a full year's syllabus and cutting into co-curricular time. That circular fixes the session-year label nationally; it says nothing about when a school actually shuts for summer, shuts for winter, or reopens after either break. Those dates are set separately by state governments and district education officers, and every CBSE school in that state or district follows the same state-mandated calendar as government and state-board schools around it. Tamil Nadu's Department of School Education, for example, issues an annual order that explicitly applies to "government, government-aided, and private schools across Tamil Nadu for all board types, State Board, Matriculation, CBSE, and ICSE." This is the reason the popular shorthand "CBSE starts in April in the North, June in the South" is misleading: the April-to-March session label is uniform nationally, but the actual reopening date after the long break genuinely does vary by region and by state, and that regional variation is the real subject of this page.
Source: CBSE Circular Aff-07/2023 (17 March 2023), CBSE SARAS portal; Tamil Nadu Department of School Education academic calendar order, reported by DT Next.
CBSE, ICSE, IB and Cambridge: Who Actually Sets the Calendar
All four boards leave the local vacation calendar to someone other than the board itself, but each does it differently.
| Board | Who Sets the Vacation Calendar | Session-Year Model | Typical Exam Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| CBSE | State government / district education officer; CBSE mandates only the 1 April to 31 March session boundary. | Uniform nationally: 1 April to 31 March. | Board exams February-April; results typically May. |
| ICSE / ISC | Individual school, within a Council-set window. | CISCE's own Regulations for Examination state the academic year begins "from the middle of March and the first week of June," with hill schools permitted to start in February; the exact date is a school-level choice within that window. | ICSE (Class 10) and ISC (Class 12) board exams February-April. |
| IB | Individual school, entirely. | Split by school profile: India-market schools that run IB alongside CBSE/ICSE/Cambridge generally use April-March; internationally/expatriate-facing schools generally use August/July-June. A small number of schools run both models on different streams of the same campus. | Nearly all India-based IB schools sit the May exam session regardless of which school-year model they use, since India sits in IB's Northern Hemisphere exam zone. |
| Cambridge (CAIE) | Individual school; Cambridge sets only the global exam-series windows, not a local term calendar. | Split by school profile, similar to IB: mainstream schools that add Cambridge onto a CBSE base generally run April-March; "international school" archetypes generally run August-June. | India-aligned schools sit Cambridge's India/Romania-specific February/March series (results mid-May); international-calendar schools sit the global May/June series (results mid-August). |
Source: CBSE Circular Aff-07/2023; CISCE Regulations for Examination (recurring wording across the 2023-2028 editions, cisce.org); Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Mumbai academic calendar (illustrating the IB/CBSE/ICSE split within one campus); Cambridge International press release, 20 May 2025, on the India/Romania March series.
North vs South vs East vs West: What Actually Changes
Within any board, the practical calendar (when the long break falls, and what the "second break" is) is set by the state, and it follows five broad regional patterns rather than a single national one. Every window below is a typical, illustrative range from recent academic-year cycles; state governments revise exact dates most years, especially with heatwave extensions, so treat these as patterns rather than fixed annual dates.
| Region | Representative States | Long Break | Typical Window | "Second Break" Instead of / Alongside Winter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Plains | Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh | Summer | Mid-May to late June / early July (roughly 6-7 weeks) | Short Christmas / New Year break, roughly 10-20 days |
| South | Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala | Summer | Mid-April to early-mid June (roughly 6-7 weeks), earlier than the North | State-specific festival break, not Christmas-centered: Dasara (Karnataka), Pongal (Tamil Nadu), Sankranti (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana), Onam (Kerala) |
| East | West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam | Varies sharply by state | West Bengal's base summer allocation is unusually short (~15 days, often extended); Bihar ~20 days; Odisha closer to the southern pattern (~40+ days) | Durga Puja / autumn festival break (West Bengal, up to ~25 days); Diwali-Chhath cluster (Bihar); monsoon-shifted break (Assam, typically July) |
| West | Maharashtra, Gujarat | Summer | Roughly 5-7 weeks, reopening mid-to-late June | Ganesh Chaturthi / Dussehra cluster (Maharashtra); an unusually long Diwali break, ~21 days (Gujarat), which substitutes for a Christmas-centered winter break |
| Hill / High-Altitude | Kashmir Valley, Ladakh, high-altitude Himachal Pradesh, hill districts of Uttarakhand | Winter (inverted) | Roughly 2-3.5 months, from early-to-mid December through late February or March | Summer break is the SHORT one here, typically 2-3 weeks |
Source: State education department circulars and academic-calendar orders (Delhi Directorate of Education, Karnataka DSEL, Tamil Nadu DSE, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Sakshi Education notifications, Kerala GED, West Bengal WBBSE Model Holiday List, Gujarat GSHSEB via DeshGujarat), cross-checked against education-news coverage (Careers360, Outlook India, DT Next), 2025-26/2026-27 cycles.
Where Winter, Not Summer, Is the Long Vacation
The inverted calendar in India's hill and high-altitude regions is not an informal local custom; it is formal, named state policy, and in several places it is administered at the level of individual schools based on altitude rather than state boundaries.
Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan
Summer-closing vs. Winter-closingIndia's largest school network, with over 1,250 schools nationwide, officially classifies its own schools into "summer closing" and "winter closing" categories in its own vacation schedule, with winter breaks running up to 70 days in the winter-closing category depending on zone.
Kashmir Valley
~2-3 months winter closureSchools run a March-to-November session with winter vacation, not summer vacation, as the long break: roughly early December to late February or early March. Summer vacation is short, typically about two weeks in July.
Ladakh (Leh and Kargil)
Up to ~3.5 monthsThe longest winter closure found in this research, beginning as early as 8 December in the coldest sub-zones and, with district-administration extensions, running into mid-to-late March.
Jammu Division, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand
Split by altitude, not stateEach of these states formally divides its own schools into a plains-like "summer zone / summer-closing" group and a high-altitude "winter zone / winter-closing" group. Dehradun and Jammu city follow the plains pattern; higher-altitude districts in the same state follow the inverted one.
Source: Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan official vacation schedule (kvsangathan.nic.in); Jammu and Kashmir Directorate of School Education Order No. 458-DSEJ of 2025; Ladakh Administration and Leh district notices (ladakh.gov.in, leh.nic.in); Himachal Pradesh Directorate of Higher Education, "Calendar for winter and summer closing schools" (education.hp.gov.in).
Getting the Calendar Wrong Is an Operating Cost, Not a Detail
For a school promoter or investor evaluating a new site, the regional calendar is not a curiosity; it directly shapes admissions cycles, teacher hiring windows, fee-collection timing, and the length of the academic year actually delivered.
Admissions timing follows the local reopening date, not the board's session label
An admissions campaign timed for an April CBSE "session start" will be too early in Chennai or Bengaluru, where the practical restart is May-June, and too late in Kashmir, where the session restarts in March.
Teacher hiring cycles should match the region's actual break, not a generic national calendar
A school hiring on a "summer vacation" assumption in West Bengal, where the base summer break is unusually short and the long break is Durga Puja in October-November, is planning around the wrong window.
Multi-board or multi-city operators need a calendar strategy, not a single template
A school group running both a CBSE campus in Delhi and a CBSE or Cambridge campus in Chennai or Kochi is, in effect, running two different operating calendars under one board name. RAYSolute builds site-specific academic and operating calendars as part of every feasibility study.
Academic Calendar Questions, Answered
Does CBSE mandate a national school reopening date?
No. CBSE mandates the session YEAR (1 April to 31 March) via Circular Aff-07/2023, but the actual date a school closes for a break and reopens is set by the state government or district education officer, and every CBSE school in that state follows the same calendar as government and state-board schools around it.
Why do South Indian schools start later than North Indian schools?
The April-to-March session year is the same nationally; what differs is when the long summer break falls. North Indian states typically break in mid-May and reopen in late June or early July. South Indian states typically break earlier, from mid-April, and reopen in late May or early-to-mid June, broadly tracking when the southwest monsoon reaches each region.
Is Tamil Nadu's Pongal vacation a real, officially notified school holiday?
Yes, a roughly four-day Pongal vacation each January is officially notified by Tamil Nadu's Directorate of School Education and applies across government, aided, matriculation and recognised private schools, including CBSE and ICSE schools in the state. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have a longer equivalent, the Sankranti break, typically 9 to 13 days.
Do all IB schools in India follow the same academic year?
No. India-market-facing IB schools that run IB alongside CBSE, ICSE or Cambridge generally follow the April-to-March Indian year. More internationally or expatriate-facing IB schools generally follow an August-to-June year. A small number of schools, such as Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai, run both models across different streams of the same campus. Almost all India-based IB schools sit the May exam session regardless of which model they use.
What is Cambridge's India-specific March exam series?
Cambridge International runs a February/March exam series specifically for India and Romania, aligned to the Indian academic calendar, with results in mid-May. It lets Cambridge schools on the standard April-to-March Indian year receive results in time for the new session and Indian university admissions, rather than waiting for the global May/June series that international-calendar Cambridge schools use instead.
Which parts of India have winter, not summer, as the main school vacation?
Hill and high-altitude regions, most clearly the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh, run an inverted calendar with a long winter closure of roughly two to three-and-a-half months and only a short two-to-three-week summer break. Jammu division, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand each formally split their own schools into a plains-like group and a high-altitude inverted group by altitude, not by state boundary. The Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan officially classifies its own nationwide network into summer-closing and winter-closing schools for the same reason.
Does West Bengal really follow a different academic year cycle?
Yes. West Bengal's state board runs a January-to-December term structure rather than April-to-March. Its base summer vacation is unusually short, around 15 days, and its dominant long break is the Durga Puja and autumn festival vacation in October-November rather than a winter holiday.
Planning a School Around the Right Calendar
RAYSolute advises school promoters, trusts, and institutional investors on feasibility studies, board selection, and market entry strategy across India, including the site-specific academic and operating calendar a new school should plan around.