Back to School Around the World: When Do Students Start?

September is synonymous with going back to school - regardless of whether you have a student or teacher in your home.

This makes sense with our seasonal changes and traditional harvest times. The same is true for the countries where our sponsored children live and study. So, unsurprisingly, most sponsored children don’t have the first-day-back butterflies in September.

Of all the 13 countries we serve, only Ukraine has the same academic year as we do. Haiti and Ghana are the next closest to ours, with Haiti’s year bumped later by a month (October to July) and our friends in Ghana got started last month and will wrap up in May. 

Meanwhile, our friends in Latin America, who have opposite seasons to ours, enjoy their summer holidays sometime between November and February. Over in East Africa, their school years conclude with the arrival of their wettest season, which is the end of the calendar year. In India, it depends on where in the country they are, possibly attending classes from April to March or others from June to May. In The Philippines, classes typically begin in our summer and finish in our springtime.

If you would like to send your child a gift of special money for school supplies at the beginning of their year, learn more at www.chalice.ca/send-a-gift-of-special-money.