What does INSET stand for?

In-Service Education and Training. It refers to the training, planning and administrative work staff do on a day when pupils don't attend school.

Why are INSET days called Baker days?

They're named after Kenneth Baker, the Conservative Education Secretary who introduced them in 1988 alongside the National Curriculum reforms. He added training days on top of teachers' existing contracted days, and the nickname stuck, though INSET day is now the more common term.

How many INSET days do schools have each year?

Most schools use five a year. Pupils must be taught for a minimum of 190 days, while teachers are contracted for 195, and INSET days fill that five-day gap. Some schools are permitted up to six.

Do INSET days count as school holidays?

No. An INSET day is a normal working day for the school and its staff, just without pupils. It's not a bonus holiday, and taking a child out of school around one for a family trip is generally treated as ordinary term-time absence.

Can two schools in the same area have different INSET days?

Yes, easily. Each school sets its own INSET days independently, so two schools a short walk apart, or two siblings at different schools, can have completely different dates.

Why is it harder to find childcare for an INSET day than for a normal school holiday?

Because an INSET day isn't coordinated with anything else. Holiday clubs are built around official school holiday weeks, not single random weekdays, and other local schools are often still open, so the childcare options that work for half term don't automatically work for one school's INSET day.

How do I find out my child's school's INSET days in advance?

Check your school's own website, app or newsletter rather than a generic calendar. INSET days are often confirmed separately from the main term dates, sometimes only a term or two ahead, so it's worth checking more than once a year.

Do teachers work on INSET days?

Yes. It's a working day for staff, used for training, planning, moderation and administrative tasks. The school isn't closed, only closed to pupils.

INSET Days Explained: Baker Days, Dates and Childcare

Key Takeaways

An INSET day is a staff training day when pupils don't attend school. Most schools have five a year, filling the gap between the 190 days pupils are taught and the 195 days teachers are contracted for.
INSET days are also called Baker days, after Kenneth Baker, the Education Secretary who introduced them in 1988.
Each school sets its own INSET days independently, so two schools nearby, or two siblings at different schools, can have completely different dates.
INSET-day childcare is harder to arrange than holiday childcare because it isn't coordinated with other schools or with holiday clubs, which are built around official holiday weeks, not single days.

You check the calendar on a Sunday night and notice Thursday says "INSET day," and you're fairly sure it didn't say that the last time you looked. Nothing about the date has changed. You just found out later than you'd have liked, and now you're working out who can have your child for one day that no other school, club or nursery is planning around.

An INSET day is a staff training day: pupils stay home, but teachers are in school for training, planning and admin. Most schools have five a year, and each one picks its own dates and confirms them directly, often separately from the main term-dates document. That's exactly why it catches families out: there's no single calendar to check, and no reason two schools nearby would pick the same day.

This guide covers what INSET days actually are, why they're sometimes called Baker days, how many to expect, and the part that causes the real disruption: why they never seem to line up between schools, siblings or the childminder's other families.

What is an INSET day?

An INSET day is a working day for school staff and a non-attendance day for pupils. INSET stands for In-Service Education and Training, and the day is used for staff training, planning, moderation and administrative work that's harder to fit around a full teaching timetable.

It is not a bonus holiday and not a snow day. The school isn't closed, it's closed to pupils specifically, while the building carries on with a full working day for everyone else. On a typical INSET day, staff might spend the morning moderating writing assessments across year groups and the afternoon in training on a new reading scheme, the kind of work that's genuinely hard to do properly with 30 children in the room.

Why are INSET days also called Baker days?

They're named after Kenneth Baker, the Conservative Education Secretary who introduced them in 1988 as part of the same wave of reforms that brought in the National Curriculum. Before 1988, teachers' contracted days matched pupils' teaching days. Baker's changes added extra contracted days on top, specifically for training, and the days that resulted picked up his name.

"Baker day" has mostly fallen out of everyday use in favour of "INSET day," but you'll still hear it, especially from anyone who was at school themselves in the years just after 1988.

How many INSET days are there each year?

Most schools have five INSET days a year, and some are permitted up to six. The number comes directly from the gap between two figures: pupils must be taught for a minimum of 190 days a year, while teachers are contracted for 195. INSET days are what fill that five-day difference.

Schools typically attach INSET days to the start or end of a term or holiday, effectively stretching a break by a day, though they can fall on any school day in the year. Because each school makes this decision independently, the timing is genuinely unpredictable from the outside.

Why did my child have an INSET day when the school down the road didn't?

Because INSET days are set school by school, not council by council or nationally. There's no shared calendar coordinating them, so proximity tells you nothing. Two schools on the same street, or two siblings at different schools in the same family, can end up with completely different INSET dates in the same term.

A few things make this worse in practice, not better:

INSET dates are often confirmed separately from the main term-dates document, sometimes only a term or two in advance, so "checking once a year" isn't enough
Academies in England can set their own dates independently of the local authority, adding another layer of variation on top of school-by-school differences
A date that's a normal working Tuesday for you can become a no-school day for your child with very little warning

None of this is a mistake anyone is making. It's just what happens when every school, rather than a single body, decides its own INSET calendar. A childminder looking after children from three different primary schools can easily end up with three different INSET days to plan around in the same half-term, none of them overlapping.

What should you do about childcare on an INSET day?

Confirm the date as early as you can, then treat it differently from holiday childcare, because it behaves differently. Holiday clubs are built around official school holiday weeks, so they generally have capacity and a routine ready to go. An INSET day is a single, isolated weekday that most other local schools are probably not observing, which means the club, the nursery and the school gate mums you'd normally lean on may all be unavailable in exactly the way they wouldn't be during half term.

A few things that help:

Check for INSET days as soon as your school publishes or updates them, not just once at the start of the year
Ask registered childminders specifically. They're often more flexible than nurseries or holiday clubs for a single odd day, precisely because they're not tied to a holiday-club schedule
Tell everyone who might need to know before you need them to act on it, not after you've already realised you're stuck

If you're taking the day as a family trip instead of arranging cover, treat it like any other term-time absence. Most schools and local authorities apply the same rules to an INSET-adjacent day off as to any other, so it's worth checking your school's policy rather than assuming an INSET day makes a day off exempt from the usual term-time absence process.

Working out that Thursday is suddenly an INSET day is the easy part once you've spotted it. Getting that date in front of the childminder covering three other families, or the grandparent who assumed school was on as normal, is where it actually falls apart. Maxie's School Holidays feature turns your school's confirmed dates, INSET days included, into calendar blocks the whole family can see, so a no-school day never lands as a surprise on the morning itself. Try it free with no card required.

Related Resources: