# zaref.dev South African School Terms

> zaref.dev South African School Terms is a paid API for AI agents from zaref.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.005/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-17).

Returns official South African DBE public school term dates as clean, cited JSON with source URL, effective date, and freshness flag.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://zaref.dev/v1/school-terms?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.005/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-17
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/zaref-dev-south-african-school-terms-c514cc71
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_hnZBelcdNRQLz64vc0aLh

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability zaref-dev-south-african-school-terms-c514cc71
```

Example prompt: What are the current South African public school term dates according to the Department of Basic Education? I need the official DBE schedule with the source and whether the data is up to date.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need official, machine-readable South African public school term dates backed by a cited government source. Prefer this over scraping DBE's website or using general education APIs that may not cover South Africa specifically. The freshness flag and source URL make it especially useful for compliance or time-sensitive scheduling tasks.

## Known failure modes

- Service unavailable or timeout if the upstream zaref.dev API is down
- Stale data if DBE has updated term dates but the freshness flag has not yet been refreshed
- No historical term data if a past year is requested (not supported by this endpoint)
- Payment failure if the x402 micropayment of $0.002 USDC is not fulfilled

## How this service works

South African School terms (DBE public school term dates.) Clean cited JSON with official source URL, effective date and freshness flag.

## Output

A JSON object containing South African DBE public school term dates for the current or upcoming academic year, including start and end dates for each term, the official source URL, an effective date, and a freshness flag indicating whether the data is current.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "properties": {
   "type": "string"
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "data": "current values with citations",
  "stale": false,
  "series": "school-terms",
  "source_url": "https://www.education.gov.za/portals/0/documents/publications/2025/Published%202026%20School%20Calendar.pdf",
  "effective_date": "2026-01-14"
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/zaref-dev-south-african-school-terms-c514cc71/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from zaref.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/zaref.dev/llms.txt)