Editorial Policy

Source hierarchy

Primary state and territory government education pages, official government files and government calendar downloads are the preferred sources. Unofficial aggregators are not used as date authorities. A source record stores its authority, title, URL, access date, verification date and status.

HTML pages and PDFs

Information is checked against the published government page or document. When a source changes or a PDF replaces an earlier page, the newer authoritative publication takes precedence and the older source can be marked superseded.

Conflicts and calculations

If official sources conflict, the publication pauses the affected fact until the conflict is resolved or uses the more specific current government publication with an explanatory note. A calculated holiday period is allowed only when confirmed term-end and following student-start dates make the calculation unambiguous. It is labelled calculated and includes the method.

Future and preliminary dates

Confirmed future calendars can be published. Preliminary, unverified and superseded calendar data is not included in production state routes or XML sitemaps. The site never extrapolates a date from a prior year.

Review, automation and corrections

Calendar files record review dates and are validated at build time for chronology, source references, invalid ranges and missing calculation explanations. Automation checks data structure; a human reviews source interpretation and corrections. Material changes are added to the corrections record after verification.

Commercial policy

Advertising, if enabled on production content pages, is kept separate from calendar facts and editorial decisions. Advertisers do not select, alter or approve calendar content.