Schools return in the first week of January after a winter break of about two weeks, opening the second term of the academic year that began the previous August. The term runs without a scheduled interruption to the spring break at the end of March, which makes it the longest continuous stretch of teaching on the UAE school calendar and the one that carries the bulk of the year's assessment.
January opens the first quarter of 2030 on Gulf Standard Time, UTC+4, which the UAE keeps every day of the year without a clock change of any kind. Through January that places the country four hours ahead of London, three ahead of continental Europe and an hour and a half behind India, which sits on the half-hour offset of UTC+5:30 — the reason a call to Mumbai never lands on a round hour.
The turn from January into February takes the country deeper into the only stretch of the year in which a walk at midday is an ordinary thing to do. January 2030 hands over the last of the festival season to a month with no fixed holiday, shortened working hours in every year of this decade, and the first sign of the warmth returning at its far end.