Northwest Territories (NWT) education bodies are responsible for developing school calendars for Junior Kindergarten to Grade 12, which is often done in partnership with the school principal and superintendent. 

Once they’ve drafted the calendar, there is a motion for the District Education Authorities (DEA), District Education Councils (DEC), or Commission scolaire francophone Territoires du Nord-Ouest (CSF) to approve it. After that, staff at the Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) and the Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association (NWTTA) review each to make sure they meet all the requirements. Finally, the calendars are submitted to the Minister of ECE. 

Once approved, any substantial changes to school calendars must be made by a DEA/DEC motion and submitted to ECE.

• Have questions about school calendars? Read this FAQ

When it comes to creating a school calendar, there are a lot of requirements that your school and education body have to take into consideration. There are laws, policies, and contracts between education bodies and their educators (collective agreements) that dictate how many hours of teaching students in each grade must get, how many hours of professional development educators must receive, time and resources for Indigenous languages and cultural programming, etc.

Education bodies must lay out many details in the calendar, including dates for school opening and closing, breaks, statutory holidays, report cards, professional development days for educators, hours of instruction, outside instructional hours (parent/teacher conferences, open houses or cultural events), etc.

If you have feedback about the school calendar, on topics like early dismissals, March break dates or professional development days, contact your school principal. If necessary, they can bring your concerns to the education body superintendent or further.