School holidays do not add hours to your week
No school and no BSO during a school holiday can make the week feel heavier, but your daily and weekly limits do not move. This article states that rule plainly, a school holiday means the same hours arranged differently, not more hours, and it points you to the regional dates so you can plan around them early.
Last checked Aug 21, 2026
School holidays do not add hours to your week
No school and no BSO during a school holiday can make the week feel heavier, with the children home all day instead of part of it. Your daily and weekly limits do not move for that. A school holiday means the same hours arranged differently across the week, not more hours added on top.
Why a school holiday feels like more work
On a normal day, school and buitenschoolse opvang cover a large part of the children's time. In a school holiday that structure disappears at once: no school, no BSO unless it has specifically been booked for that week, and the children home for the whole day. It is easy for the actual week to drift past the schedule during a holiday, simply because the schedule was written around a normal week.
Your legal limits do not move
The rule does not change during a school holiday: 8 hours a day (checked 2026-08-18), 30 hours a week (checked 2026-08-18), and 2 full free days a week (checked 2026-08-18), exactly as on any other week. See hours-what-counts for what counts toward those hours. If your host family is on holiday together, you do no household tasks at all during that trip, which is the opposite problem: fewer hours, not more.
Studiedagen are not holidays, but they land the same way
Schools also close for individual studiedagen, teacher training days scattered through the year outside the official holiday weeks. On those days the children are suddenly home on what would otherwise be a normal school day, and the same limits apply: a studiedag does not raise your ceiling either.
Plan around the calendar early
The Netherlands is divided into three holiday regions, and schools within a region do not all follow an identical calendar either, some national dates are advisory and individual schools can adjust them. Ask your host family's school for its own holiday calendar in writing, early, rather than finding out week by week. school-holidays-per-region has the actual dates and regions for the current school year. Agreeing which weeks are your own holiday, separate from the school calendar, is a conversation to have with your host family well before the holiday arrives, not during it.