Teacher Resignation Dates 2026/27: Deadlines and Notice Periods

The three deadlines, in one table

If you only read one part of this page, read this. There are exactly three dates on which a teacher covered by the Burgundy Book can normally leave a post, and exactly one resignation deadline attached to each of them. The deadline is the last day on which your resignation can be received in order to leave on the corresponding date.

Read the table as a lookup in one direction only. Start with the date you want to leave, move across to the column for your role, and that is your deadline. Reading it the other way round — "I want to resign in March, when can I leave?" — is where people go wrong, because a resignation submitted in March is after the February deadline and therefore takes effect at the end of the following term, on 31 August, not on 30 April.

The 31 May date is worth singling out because it is counter-intuitive in two directions at once. It is the earliest of the three deadlines relative to the leaving date it produces — three months rather than two — and it falls a long way before the point in the year when most teachers are thinking seriously about September. A teacher who decides in late June that they would like a fresh start in the autumn has, contractually, already missed the only deadline that would have made that possible.

Why the dates are what they are: the three notional terms

Almost every misunderstanding about teacher resignation dates traces back to one thing: the Burgundy Book's "terms" are not your school's terms. Paragraph 1.1 of Section 3 defines them as a fixed, notional calendar, while dealing with a completely different subject — the requirement that teachers should receive not less than one third of a year's salary for each full term's service:

• the Summer term from 1 May to 31 August;
• the Autumn term from 1 September to 31 December; and
• the Spring term from 1 January to 30 April.

Three equal four-month blocks, with no gaps and no overlap, covering the whole calendar year. No school in England or Wales runs on that calendar. Your autumn term probably begins in the first week of September and ends around 19 or 20 December; your summer term probably ends somewhere in the third week of July. Those real dates are irrelevant to the notice calculation. The Burgundy Book's notice provision attaches to the notional terms, which is why the leaving dates are always 31 December, 30 April and 31 August, and never the day your school actually breaks up.

Understanding this one definition makes the rest of the scheme obvious rather than arbitrary. It explains why there are exactly three leaving dates. It explains why the summer deadline is 31 May rather than some date in June or July. And it explains the pay provision covered further down this page: if the Summer term runs to 31 August in the agreement's own terms, then a teacher who leaves at the end of the Summer term is employed, and paid, until 31 August.

The notice rule itself: paragraphs 4.1 and 4.2

Section 3 paragraph 4 of the Burgundy Book is headed "Period of notice and termination of contract", and the two paragraphs that produce the deadlines are short enough to set out in full.

Paragraph 4.1 provides that all teachers are under a minimum of two months' notice, and three months in the Summer term, terminating at the end of a school term as defined in paragraph 1. Paragraph 4.2 then provides that notwithstanding paragraph 4.1, all headteachers are under a minimum of three months' notice, and four months in the Summer term, again terminating at the end of a school term as defined in paragraph 1.

Two features of that drafting do most of the work. The first is "minimum": these are floors, not fixed periods. Giving more notice than the minimum is always permitted, and for a teacher with a leadership role or a hard-to-replace specialism it is often the decent thing to do. What you cannot do is give less. The second is "terminating at the end of a school term", which is the clause that converts a period of notice into a set of fixed dates. A notice period that must end at a term boundary cannot produce a leaving date in the middle of a term, however much notice you give.

Put those together and the arithmetic falls out directly. Two months back from 31 December is 31 October. Two months back from 30 April is the last day of February. Three months back from 31 August — three rather than two, because the notice would be given during the notional Summer term that begins on 1 May — is 31 May. For headteachers, add a month to each: three months back from 31 December is 30 September, three months back from 30 April is 31 January, and four months back from 31 August is 30 April.

One practical note on deputy and assistant headteachers, because it is asked constantly: paragraph 4.2 applies to headteachers, and the Burgundy Book's own definition in Section 2 paragraph 1.1 treats "teachers" as including headteachers rather than as a separate category. A deputy head is therefore on the standard teacher deadlines unless their individual contract imposes something longer. Many trusts do impose longer notice on senior leaders by contract, which is entirely lawful — the Burgundy Book sets minimums, and a contract can improve on them. Check your own written particulars rather than assuming.

Teacher resignation dates for the 2026/27 academic year

Applied to the current academic year, the three deadlines fall as follows. There is nothing unusual about 2026/27 — the dates are fixed and repeat annually — but seeing them mapped onto the live calendar makes the planning problem concrete.

Note that 2027 is not a leap year, so the spring deadline is 28 February 2027. In leap years the deadline moves to 29 February — the requirement is two months' notice expiring on 30 April, so it runs from the last day of February whatever that day happens to be.

The gap between the headteacher deadline and the teacher deadline for the same leaving date is worth planning around if you are a head who has been approached about another post, or a deputy considering a headship move. A head who wants to leave at Christmas has to have decided, and told their governing board, before the end of September — which in most schools is roughly three weeks into the autumn term.

You are paid to the leaving date, not the last day of term

This is the provision that reassures most people and that very little of the available guidance mentions. Paragraph 2.1 of Section 3 governs what happens to salary when a teacher resigns, and it is explicit that all teachers resigning their appointments will be paid salary to the end of the relevant notional term: to 31 August at the end of the Summer term, to 31 December at the end of the Autumn term, and to 30 April at the end of the Spring term.

So a teacher leaving at the end of the summer is paid through the entire summer holiday, up to and including 31 August, even though they last stood in a classroom in the third week of July. The August pay is not a bonus or a gesture — it is contractual salary for a period during which they remain employed. The same logic runs through the other two dates: resign to leave at the end of the Spring term and you are paid to 30 April, which covers the Easter holiday.

There are two carve-outs, both of which exist to prevent a teacher being paid twice for the same days by two different employers. Where a teacher is resigning to take up an appointment with another employer, and the new employer's school opens for the Autumn term before 1 September, the outgoing employer pays to the day preceding that opening date rather than to 31 August. The equivalent applies at the end of the Spring term: if the new employer's Summer term starts before 1 May, the outgoing employer pays to the day before it starts.

Paragraph 2.1 adds a small but genuinely useful protection alongside the spring carve-out. A teacher resigning with effect from the end of the Spring term to take up an appointment with another employer should not be required by the former employer to attend the first days of the Summer term if that term commences earlier than 1 May. In other words, if your old school's summer term starts on 20 April and your new school's starts on 21 April, your old school cannot insist you come back for that one day in between.

The eight-year rule almost everyone misreads

Paragraph 4.3 of Section 3 is short and consistently misunderstood. It provides that notwithstanding paragraph 4.1, where a teacher has been continuously employed for more than eight years, they shall be entitled to receive additional notice, as specified in the Employment Rights Act 1996.

The word doing all the work is receive. Paragraph 4.3 is about notice the teacher is given by the employer, not notice the teacher has to give. It is a protection for long-serving staff facing dismissal or redundancy, not an extra obligation on long-serving staff who want to leave. Guidance that describes it as lengthening your own resignation notice after eight years has the provision backwards.

The reason the trigger sits at "more than eight years" becomes clear once you look at the statutory minimum it refers to. Section 86(1) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 sets the notice an employer must give: not less than one week where continuous employment is less than two years, not less than one week for each year of continuous employment where it is two years or more but less than twelve, and not less than twelve weeks where it is twelve years or more. Two months is roughly 8.7 weeks. At eight completed years the statutory entitlement is eight weeks, which is still short of two months; at nine completed years it is nine weeks, which exceeds it. So it is at the point where service passes eight years that the statute first becomes more generous than the Burgundy Book's own minimum, and paragraph 4.3 makes clear that the more generous figure governs.

The mirror-image point is just as important and just as often missed. Section 86(2) fixes the minimum notice an employee must give at not less than one week, and it does not scale with service at all — a teacher with twenty-five years' service owes the same statutory one week as a teacher with thirteen months. Your resignation obligation comes from your contract, which for most teachers means the Burgundy Book's two or three months; it does not grow because you have been at the school a long time.

One practical qualification. Because the Burgundy Book's notice must terminate at the end of a notional term, the period between a dismissal notice and a term boundary will frequently already exceed twelve weeks, in which case the statutory minimum is simply absorbed and paragraph 4.3 changes nothing in practice. Paragraph 4.3 matters most where the two interact awkwardly — for example, where a dismissal is not governed by the term-end structure, or where a payment in lieu of notice is being calculated. If a redundancy or capability process is live, that is precisely the point to get union advice on the notice calculation rather than accepting the first figure offered.

Redundancy, ill health and gross misconduct: what paragraph 4.4 covers

Paragraph 4.4 sets the scope of the whole notice provision in a single sentence: the provisions of paragraphs 4.1 to 4.3 apply to the termination of a teacher's contract for any reason other than gross misconduct.

Two things follow. The first is the obvious one: gross misconduct is the stated exception, because summary dismissal for gross misconduct is by definition dismissal without notice. Nothing in paragraphs 4.1 to 4.3 requires a school to keep a teacher on the payroll to a term boundary in that situation.

The second is the one that matters to far more teachers, and it is confirmed by the 2023 edition's own record of what changed. The Joint Commentary at Appendix IX, in its notes on Section 3, states that paragraph 4.4 was amended to clarify that the provisions of paragraphs 4.1 to 4.3 do apply to dismissals for ill health and redundancy. That is not an inference from the drafting; it is the negotiating parties saying so directly.

The practical consequence is that a teacher being dismissed on ill-health grounds or made redundant is entitled to the same term-end notice structure, and to the paragraph 4.3 statutory uplift where service exceeds eight years. If you are in a redundancy process and have been offered a termination date that does not sit at a term boundary, or a notice period calculated purely on the statutory minimum, that is worth querying — politely, in writing, and with your union's support. It will not always change the answer, because a redundancy can be agreed on different terms by consent and payments in lieu are common, but it should at least be an informed agreement rather than an assumption.

Who is not bound by these dates at all

This is the section of the agreement that almost no published guidance on resignation dates mentions, and it is the one most likely to change the answer for a reader on a temporary contract. The notice rule in Section 3 paragraph 4 does not apply to everyone who teaches in a school. It applies to "teachers" as that word is defined in Section 2, and Section 2 paragraph 1.1 carves two groups out of that definition.

Paragraph 1.1 defines "teachers" as all teachers, including headteachers, who work in schools or in centrally managed local authority services and who are remunerated on a full-time or part-time basis, other than:

• (a) those employed on a day-to-day or other short-notice basis — that is, teachers paid at a daily or hourly rate — under the terms of the STPCD or STPC(W)D; and
• (b) those employed on a temporary basis either for a period of one term or less, or as substitutes for permanently appointed teachers absent for reasons such as secondment, prolonged illness or maternity.

Paragraph 1.3 then deals with what category (b) teachers are covered by, and this is the operative sentence: those teachers are covered by all sections of the document, except paragraph 4 of Section 3, unless there is no other stated notice provision within their contract.

It is worth being precise about the boundaries of category (b), because it is narrower than "any fixed-term contract". It covers temporary contracts of one term or less, and it covers substitutes for permanently appointed teachers absent for reasons such as secondment, prolonged illness or maternity. A one-year fixed-term contract covering, say, a curriculum project or a temporary funding stream — not standing in for a named absent colleague — is not obviously within either limb, and a teacher in that position should assume the ordinary deadlines apply unless their contract says otherwise. The word "such as" in the drafting gives some flexibility around the reason for the absence, but the structure of the carve-out is clearly about cover for an absent post-holder, not about fixed-term work generally.

If your position is a fixed-term one, the companion question to this page is what happens at the end of that contract rather than what happens if you resign during it — non-renewal of a fixed-term contract is a dismissal in law, and the rules around it are set out in our guide to fixed-term teaching contracts.

Day-to-day supply teachers are outside the rule entirely

Category (a) of paragraph 1.1 — teachers employed on a day-to-day or other short-notice basis, paid at a daily or hourly rate — is handled differently again, and more restrictively. Paragraph 1.2 sets out the complete list of what those teachers are covered by:

• Paragraphs 5 and 6 of Section 3 — termination on medical grounds, and retirement;
• Paragraphs 1, 2 and 4 of Section 6 — leave for examinations, leave for jury and other public service, and leave for other purposes;
• The whole of Section 7 — grievance and disciplinary procedures;
• Paragraphs 1 and 2 of Section 8 — insurance for the teacher, and travelling allowances.

Section 3 paragraph 4 is not on that list, so the notice rule does not apply to day-to-day supply teachers at all — not by default, not conditionally, not unless their contract says otherwise. Nor, incidentally, are the sick pay scheme in Section 4 or the maternity scheme in Section 5 on the list, which is a materially worse position than category (b) teachers occupy and is one of the underappreciated costs of day-rate supply work.

If you work through an agency, a further layer applies: your employer is very often the agency or an umbrella company rather than the school, so your notice obligations sit in that contract rather than in any school document. Our supply teacher pay guide covers how that employment structure works and what it costs.

Academies, free schools and independent schools

The Burgundy Book is a collective agreement, negotiated between the National Employers' Organisation for School Teachers and the recognised teaching unions. A collective agreement does not, by itself, give an individual teacher contractual rights. It binds you because — and only because — it has been incorporated into your individual contract of employment, either expressly or through a longstanding practice the courts would recognise as incorporation.

If you are unsure, the document to look at is your written statement of employment particulars, which every employer must provide at the commencement of employment. It should state your notice period, or identify the collective agreement that does. A contract that says something like "your notice period is as set out in the Conditions of Service for School Teachers in England and Wales" is incorporating the Burgundy Book expressly, and the deadlines on this page are yours. A contract that states its own notice period in weeks or months without reference to a term boundary is doing something different, and you should read it on its own terms.

One more wrinkle worth flagging for anyone whose school has converted or is converting. Where staff transfer to an academy trust under TUPE, their existing terms — including Burgundy Book notice provisions — transfer with them, which can produce a staffroom in which longer-serving colleagues are on term-end notice and newer appointments are on the trust's own contract. Our TUPE guide for teachers covers how that protection works and where its limits are.

Leaving mid-term, and what happens if you miss a deadline

Nothing in the Burgundy Book prevents an employer and a teacher agreeing a different leaving date. The notice provision gives the school a contractual right to hold you to a term-end date; like any contractual right, it can be waived. Schools release teachers mid-term more often than the rigidity of the rule suggests, particularly where a replacement is available, where the departure is for health or family reasons, or where the timing happens to be manageable for the timetable.

What you cannot do is treat an early release as an entitlement, and the way you ask matters more than most people expect. A request that acknowledges the disruption, proposes how it might be managed, and offers a genuine alternative date is a different conversation from an announcement.

If you have missed a deadline, the strict contractual position is that your resignation takes effect at the end of the following notional term. Resigning on 15 November, for example, takes effect on 30 April rather than 31 December. In practice, three outcomes are common: the school agrees to release you on the date you wanted; the school agrees a compromise date; or the school holds you to the later date, which it is entitled to do. Which one you get depends heavily on how replaceable your subject is and how the request is made.

How to actually hand in your notice

The mechanics are simple, but the ordering matters, and getting the sequence wrong is the single most common avoidable mistake — resigning against a deadline before the new job is genuinely secure.

Putting it together

The whole scheme reduces to four things worth carrying in your head. The Burgundy Book's terms are notional four-month blocks, not your school's calendar. That produces exactly three leaving dates and exactly three deadlines, one month earlier in each case for headteachers. You remain employed and paid to the end of the notional term, which is why summer leavers are paid through August. And a meaningful minority of teachers — those on one-term contracts, maternity and sickness cover, and day-rate supply — are not bound by the rule at all.

The most useful single action this page can prompt is also the least dramatic: open your contract and read the notice clause before you need it. Almost every genuinely difficult resignation-timing problem we see described begins with a teacher who discovered what their notice provision said in the same week they needed to act on it.