School years follow logically . Well, I guess its all sound to structure education around summer, everyone hates studying in stinking summer. Cause its summer here right now when your winter is, school years usually start in february and end in december (for my last year of yr 12, school ended in october). There are four terms with 2 week breaks inbetween and the uber long break at the end of the year. For Uni (college... wah? middle school? what? lol), or tertiary education, semesters vary a lot, some may be the whole year, some may have four month breaks at the end of the year. But australia is cool and shiz yeah