schoolies week

English

Etymology

From schoolie + week. The festival originated from informal parties held at beach houses in Gold Coast, Queensland, around 1975-78.

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

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Noun

schoolies week (plural schoolies weeks)

1. (Australia) A festival during which finishing high school students celebrate the end of their studies, and associated freedom.
   • 1999, Colin Symes, Daphne Meadmore, The Extra-Ordinary School: Parergonality & Pedagogy, page 203:

     Under official management schoolies week emerges almost as another kind of Gold Coast theme park; a place to go ‘wild’ safely.

   • 2008, Simon Hudson, Tourism and Hospitality Marketing: A Global Perspective, page 70:

     Traditionally there are separate Schoolies Weeks for Queensland and New South Wales/Victorian Year 12s on the Gold Coast, so that at each one, students party with their peers.

   • 2010, Elizabeth Tulloh, Melanie Napthine, Robert Beardwood, English in Year 11, page 202:

     In her opinion piece published in The Bugle on April 7 this year, Michele Bailey enthusiastically discusses the growing trend of alternative activities to the traditional schoolies week in Queensland, namely working with charitable missions in Australia and developing countries.

   • 2011, Ben Goldsmith, Tom O'Regan, Susan Ward, Local Hollywood: Global Film Production and the Gold Coast, page 200:

     Blurred focuses on characters travelling to the annual end of secondary school rite of passage in Australia, Schoolies Week on the Gold Coast, in this local variant of the teen pic.

   • 2012, Peter Ruehl, Men Are Stupid, Women Are Crazy, page 91:

     In other words, it′s the approach of that great Australian contribution to Western civilisation: schoolies week.

Alternative forms

• schoolies' week
• Schoolies Week