Select a year to see courses
Select a year to see available courses
Join 75,893 students who already have a head start.
"*" indicates required fields
Join 8000+ students each term who already have a head start on their school academic journey.
The January holiday accelerated course is not revision. It teaches the whole of the next term’s course in five or nine days, so you start the school year having already seen it once.
It is the term course, compressed. Where a Matrix term course teaches a term of content across nine weekly lessons, the holiday accelerated course teaches the same content across five or nine consecutive days at three hours a day. You finish the holidays having covered the material your school is about to start.
That is a different product from the junior holiday course, which shares the word “holiday” and does the opposite job.
| Years 3 to 10 holiday course | Years 11 to 12 holiday accelerated | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 4 days, 2 hours a day | 5 days, or 9 days over two weeks, 3 hours a day |
| What it covers | Revision of content already taught | The whole of the next term’s course |
| Relationship to the term course | Supports it | Is it, compressed |
| Who it suits | A student with one identified gap | A student who wants to meet the year’s content twice |
The compression is the point and it is also the cost. Three hours a day for nine days is a serious fortnight, and a student who is exhausted at the end of Term 4 will get less out of it than one who has had a fortnight off first. January courses starting on the 11th are deliberately not in the week after Christmas.
Because 2027 is a first examination year. The new English and Mathematics 11-12 syllabuses are examined in the HSC for the first time in 2027, which means no student sitting that paper has a bank of past HSC papers written for their course.
In an ordinary year, being ahead buys you time to practise. In a first examination year it buys you something scarcer: time to be unfamiliar. The students who struggle in a syllabus transition are usually not the ones who did not know the content. They are the ones who met an unexpected question type with no spare capacity, because they were still catching up on material when the paper arrived.
Which subjects change, and when, is set out below. The short version for a senior student is that English and Mathematics changed, every science did not, and the sciences follow on their own timetable from 2028. The Year 12 course pages show how each subject is structured.
| Subject | First HSC examination under the new syllabus |
|---|---|
| English Standard, Advanced, EAL/D, Extension | 2027 |
| Mathematics Standard, Advanced, Extension 1, Extension 2 | 2027 |
| Biology and Physics | 2028 |
| Chemistry and Earth and Environmental Science | 2029 |
The course runs in the middle of the summer break and finishes before school returns, which is the whole mechanic. NSW Eastern Division students go back on Wednesday 3 February 2027 after holidays that began on 18 December. A nine-day course starting 11 January finishes well inside that gap.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| Friday 18 December 2026 | NSW government school summer holidays begin |
| Monday 11 January 2027 | Matrix January holiday accelerated courses begin |
| Wednesday 27 January 2027 | Last day of the summer school holidays |
| Thursday 28 January to Tuesday 2 February 2027 | School development days, staff only |
| Wednesday 3 February 2027 | Term 1 begins for Eastern Division students |
So on the first day of school you are not starting the topic. You are seeing it a second time, which is a different cognitive task and a much easier one. Western Division schools return on 10 February, and the NSW Department of Education calendar gives the dates for both.
The same logic is why Matrix term courses open in October rather than January. The course year is deliberately offset by a term so that school assessment always lands on material already taught, practised and tested. The holiday accelerated course is that offset delivered in a fortnight instead of nine weeks.
Related course: Year 11 and 12 Holiday Accelerated, January 2027
Five days, or nine days across two weeks, at three hours a day, in classes capped at 15 and taught by experienced Matrix teachers. Courses cover a full term of content in English, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and Physics, so you begin the school term having already met the material once.
Courses begin Monday 11 January 2027 and finish before NSW Term 1 starts on 3 February. Timetables, campuses and current fees are on the holiday courses page, and the Year 11 and Year 12 pages set out what each term course covers.
Nine days covers a full term of content and five days covers a transition or a single compressed block, so the honest answer depends on whether you want to be a term ahead or to shore up one subject before you start it.
Take the nine-day option when the subject is one of your heavy ones and you intend to carry it through to the HSC. English and Mathematics Advanced are the usual candidates, because both reward long familiarity and both changed syllabus for 2027.
Take the five-day option when you are moving into a subject rather than continuing one. A student going from Year 10 into Year 11 Chemistry has not met senior Chemistry before, and five days of the opening content does more for them than nine days of a course they will also sit in full during the term.
Take neither when you are tired and your results are fine. A student who finishes Year 11 steady, who has had a reasonable Term 4 and who reads over summer, does not need January. The case for an accelerated course is strongest where a subject is about to get harder, not where last year went well.
One practical constraint: three hours a day for nine days is roughly the same contact time as a nine-week term course. Doing two subjects in one January is possible but it is a genuinely full fortnight, and it tends to work better for students who have done an accelerated course before and know what the pace feels like.
Three hours, one subject, in a class capped at 15. The shape is teaching, worked examples, then supervised practice, and across a nine-day course it moves faster than a school term because nothing is lost to the week between lessons.
The pace is the thing to be honest about. A nine-day course delivers roughly the contact time of a nine-week term, so each day carries slightly more than a week of school content. That works because the days are consecutive and nothing competes with them, and it stops working if you arrive already tired or try to carry two subjects without having done an accelerated course before.
Homework is set between days and it is short by necessity, since there is one evening to do it in. Its job is diagnostic: it tells the teacher what has not landed so the next morning can open there rather than move on.
What you should expect to leave with is a first pass, not mastery. A student who finishes a nine-day accelerated course has met every topic in the term once, has notes, and has done enough problems to know which parts are going to be difficult. That is a genuinely strong position in February, and it is not the same as being finished with the term.
The risk with starting ahead is coasting, and it is a real one. A student who has seen the content once can sit through the school lesson recognising everything and absorbing nothing, and arrive at the first assessment with familiarity rather than fluency.
Three habits convert the head start into marks.
Treat the school lesson as the second pass, not a repeat. You know what is coming, so spend the lesson on the part you found hard in January rather than on the part you found easy. Recognition is not the same as understanding, and the gap between them is where marks go.
Do the problems again, cold, a fortnight later. Spacing is what turns a January fortnight into something still available in August. Working a problem you have already seen, without your notes, is worth more than reading the notes twice.
Use the spare capacity on the unfamiliar. In a first examination year that means unseen question types rather than more content. The students who do well in a syllabus transition are the ones who had attention left over when something unexpected arrived, and attention is exactly what being a term ahead buys you.
Rest first, then read. For a senior student the most valuable thing in a six-week break is not more content, it is arriving in February without the fatigue that most of the cohort carries from the previous year.
Three things repay the time.
Read your syllabus. It is published free on the NSW Curriculum site and most students never open it. In a first examination year it is the only document that describes your course with authority, and it is a short read compared with what it saves you.
Learn the command verbs. They did not change with the new syllabuses, and they are the most reliable thing you can study about a paper nobody has sat. Our guide to responding to NESA key words covers what each one requires.
Choose your texts and read them once, slowly. For English this is the single highest-return summer activity. A first reading without annotation, for the story, makes every later reading faster.
If you are weighing up what your marks might mean, the ATAR calculator is more useful in December than in January, and the NSW term dates page lists every course start date for the year.
Both exist and they do different jobs, because the Matrix year runs on its own calendar. Matrix term courses open in October, a term ahead of school, so a student who joins in October is already offset before January arrives. The January accelerated course is the way into that offset for a student who did not start in October, and a way to deepen it for one who did.
If you are already enrolled in a term course, the January accelerated course covers the same content you would meet across the following nine weeks. Taking both is not usually the right call for one subject. Taking the accelerated course in a second subject, while continuing the term course in your main one, often is.
If you are not enrolled anywhere, January is the better of the two remaining entry points this year, and the reason is arithmetic rather than persuasion. A fortnight in January puts you ahead of school content from the first week of Term 1. Waiting until February means starting level with the school and staying level.
The year-level question catches families out every year and it is worth stating plainly. Because the Matrix year opens in October, a student who is in Year 11 at school during Term 4 2026 enrols in the Year 12 course, not the Year 11 one. The January holiday accelerated course follows the same logic. Check which course your school year maps to before you book rather than after, because it changes the content and the fee.
Either five days or nine days across two weeks, at three hours a day. The nine-day format covers an entire term of course content. This is different from the Years 3 to 10 holiday course, which runs four days at two hours a day and revises material students have already been taught rather than teaching ahead.
It covers the same content, compressed. The holiday accelerated course is the term course delivered across five or nine consecutive days instead of nine weekly lessons. Students who take it have met the term’s material before school teaches it, which is the same offset the Matrix term courses are built around.
They begin on Monday 11 January 2027. NSW government school summer holidays run from Friday 18 December 2026 to Wednesday 27 January 2027, and Eastern Division students return for Term 1 on Wednesday 3 February 2027. A nine-day course finishes about a fortnight before school resumes.
No. Free trials apply to term courses only, and both holiday courses and Matrix+ online courses are excluded. If you want to see a Matrix class before enrolling in a holiday course, the practical option is to trial a term course once the term begins in late January.
For English and Mathematics, yes. The 2027 HSC is the first examination under the new English 11-12 and Mathematics 11-12 syllabuses, and the 2026 HSC was the last under the previous ones. The sciences follow later, with Biology and Physics first examined in 2028 and Chemistry in 2029.
Try Matrix risk free
If a term course suits you better than a January fortnight, a free trial lesson lets you sit in on a full Matrix class in your subject before you enrol. Term courses are backed by the First Lesson Money-Back Guarantee, so if the first lesson is not right you get a full refund.
Written by Matrix Education
Matrix is Sydney's No.1 High School Tuition provider. Come read our blog regularly for study hacks, subject breakdowns, and all the other academic insights you need.
© Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au, 2025. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
