Public anger as term holiday falls during Ramadan next year

Parents of school children and the general public have started expressing their displeasure over the change in the academic calendar that coincides annual school holidays with the fasting month of Ramadan.

The current 2023-2024 academic year has ended with Tuesday being the last day. It is the annual holiday from Wednesday onwards until the 25th of next month. The new academic year will then resume on May 26th.

According to the academic calendar previously published by the Ministry of Education:

According to the academic calendar released by the Ministry of Education, the academic year will resume during the month of Ramadan in 2025. As promised by this government, the last 10 days of Ramadan are public holidays.

 According to the revised 'final' calendar that has recently been sent to schools:

The month of Ramadan will start on February 28 or March 1. The last 10 days of Ramadan and Eid holidays fall into annual holidays, as next year's Eid-ul Fitr will fall on March 30 or 31.

Earlier, the Ministry of Education had said that the current term holiday falling in the middle of the year will be moved from 2026 to December. For this purpose several academic calendars have been changed, and school semesters have become shorter and children have received fewer vacation days.

The ministry's latest change in the calendar drew criticism from parents and the public, as has been trend lately, with almost all the changes made to the calendar.

The public and parents expressed their views on social media saying that the change will be a burden on children, parents and teachers.

Some people have expressed their opinion that they cannot go outside the city to spend the holidays if it falls during Ramadan.

Some are even calling for the long holiday to be reversed; to the way it was before, in the middle of the year.

Parents have also expressed dissatisfaction with the term holidays being ‘meddled’ with every time a government changes. They say that the whole point behind a calendar is lost when it keeps changing.

"...meddling with students related stuff like this is what gets me mad. We’re already suffering so much from the post Covid changes," a parent commented.

People also pointed out that such sudden and frequent changes to the academic calendar will affect not only the students but the teachers as well.

The annual holiday being postponed to December is a promise made by President Muizzu during his presidential campaign. The President also explained his intention to change the holiday by elaborating on the promise during the campaign. Thus he’d said:

The term holiday was moved to May-June by the government of President Ibrahim Mohammed Solih. One reason was that Maldives is a tourism-dependent country and resort employees are not able to make good use of the school holidays as it falls in the peak tourist season in December.

The weather being bad at the end of the year was also cited. However, June-July is also a wet weather constellation in Maldives.