The Philippine government enacted the Republic Act (RA) 10533, or the Enhanced Basic Education Act, in 2013. This act included the Senior High School in the curriculum. It reorganized the nation’s basic education system, adding two more years for grades 11 and 12. To ensure its efficiency and success, the Department of Education (DepEd) issued DepEd Order 54, series 2022, to guide schools in offering Technical-Vocational-Livelihood (TVL) Specializations.
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The issuance of this order will help schools’ selection process for the TVL specializations their institutions should offer based on various principles. It also includes a comprehensive guide regarding the components and utilizes data for selecting TVL specializations. In addition, DepEd Order 54 contains information that schools should gather to help them in their decision-making and timelines and procedures to implement.
What is DepEd Order 54
On December 28, 2022, the Department of Education promulgated the DepEd Order (DO) 54, series (s.) 2022, known as the Guidelines on the Selection of Senior High School Technical-Vocational-Livelihood Specializations. This order institutionalizes the steps that Schools Division Offices (SDOs) and Technical-Vocational-Livelihood (TVL) Senior High Schools (SHS) must implement to determine the TVL specializations to provide.
It provides guidelines based on learner-centeredness, disaggregation, localization, and relevance principles. Furthermore, it can help schools analyze and organize data and documents from learners and national, regional, and local development. These guidelines will also help in analyzing the capacity of schools and SDOs. Thus, these guidelines will take effect from School Year (SY) 2023 and implement the TVL specializations from SY 2024 onwards.
Scope
Private schools, state universities, and colleges that provide SHS TVL may implement the guidelines enclosed in DepEd Order 54. It will assist Regional Offices (ROs), SDOs, and schools in determining the TVL specializations to provide. Also, the policy only covers the present list of SHS TVL specializations.
Guidelines on the Selection of Senior High School Technical-Vocational-Livelihood Specializations
Procedures
The guidelines under DepEd Order 54 are created based on the following principles:
Learner-centeredness
Based on section 5 of the Republic Act (RA) 1O533 or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, the K to 12 curriculum should adopt learner-centeredness. It highlights the importance of the learner preference survey administered to students and collecting the enrolment data of schools for each specialization.
Relevance
This principle refers to the SHS TVL priorities alignment to sectors with rising and growing employment prospects. To determine these significant sectors, concerned stakeholders should utilize national and regional plans as their basis.
Disaggregation
Disaggregation is split into two: by sector and space. The first one gives a comprehensive picture of sectors and their sub-sectors. Meanwhile, the disaggregation by space depends on the geographic priorities and challenges. Based on the Philippine Development Plan (PDPI 2Ol7-2O22), these should be combined to determine growth, employment opportunities, and behavior based on sector and space.
Localization
Lastly, the localization principle focuses on the information from the nearest environment of schools as an instant reference for SHS TVL. To apply this principle, concerned stakeholders will utilize the province, municipality, or city plans to localize and disaggregate national and regional plans. Additionally, SDO and schools will study face-to-face all gathered data and learners’ preferences from local and national levels to determine their capacity to provide recognized specializations.
Table 1. Components for the Selection of TVL Specializations
The table below shows the required components in planning and selecting TVL specializations schools should offer:
On the other hand, schools may use additional data sources based on the availability of other documents relevant to local and national development plans.
Figure 1. Intersections between learners’ preferences, national, regional, and local priorities, and the SDO and school’s capacity
As shown in Figure 1, this policy will help determine data intersections:
To determine these intersections, Senior High Schools (SHSs) should follow the steps below:
1. Analyze SHS TVL enrolment data for each specialization, starting from the present SY and the past three years. Also, document the enrolment data for Grades 11 and 12 per sector and specialization.
For reference, check Table 2 below for the lists of present TVL stand specializations arranged per sector:
2. Perform a survey with Junior High School (JHS) learners by questioning them to determine their five (5) chosen specializations per strand. Implement it using an online form to facilitate the survey. But if it’s a stand-alone school, the institution can utilize its enrolment data and perform a learner preference survey with JHS students.
3. Conduct an internal school assessment to gather information regarding the number of available lecture rooms, laboratories, learning resources, equipment, faculty, and work submersion sites.
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4. Examine local development plans to determine which specializations promote the economy, produce the highest employment, and employ learners. Schools can study the gathered data from the city/municipality/SDO level and other sources, such as the Community-Based Monitoring System(CBMS), Public Employment Service Office (PESO), business permits, SHS, and cultural mapping data.
5. Analyze priorities from national development plans. It will help determine priority sectors based on the latest list of SHS TVL specializations. Schools should also interview and consult with local and national government groups to validate the gathered data.
6. Determine the specializations that are relevant to the following criteria:
- Specialization is among those with the highest number of enrollees
- Specialization is among the Top 5 preferred specializations per strand, based on the ranking of specializations from the Learner Preference Survey
- School has sufficient requirements to offer specialization
- Specialization is in the local development plans/priorities
- Specialization is in the national development plans/priorities
7. Submit the data summary to the SDO.
8. With the Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE) Supervisor, the SDO’s Curriculum and Instruction Division (CID) should validate the information in the School’s Data Summary using ocular inspection and in-person or online with the organization’s focal person.
9. Through the RO Curriculum and Learning Management Division (CLMD), Regional Offices should issue approval of TVL specializations with the Regional Director’s sign.
10. Through the Bureau of Curriculum Development, the Central Office should release an issuance to outline the process for each step.
Therefore, schools should gather the information listed in Table 3 and follow the timeline and procedures in Table 4:
DepEd Order 54 Full Memo Download
To access and download the complete PDF of DepEd Order No. 54, series of 2022, a direct link is available on this page. By clicking the download button below, you can easily obtain a copy of DepEd Order 54 in PDF format.
Full PDF DepEd 54 memo file: https://www.deped.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/DO_s2022_054.pdf
Video: SHS TVL TRACK and STRANDS / K-12 EDUCATION
As stated in the video, the SHS curriculum is part of the K to 12 program, aiming to produce graduates who are holistically developed and equipped with 21st-century skills. It will prepare learners for the future, from higher education to obtaining mid-level skills, employment, or entrepreneurship. This curriculum offers various tracks or strands to learners. Hence, the guidelines on DepEd Order 54, series 2022, are crucial for the basic education system.
Summary
In summary, DepEd Order 54 provides guidelines to facilitate the selection process of TVL specializations for Senior High School. The issuance of this policy established the process that schools should conduct to identify the TVL specializations to offer and help assess the capacity of educational institutions and SDOs. Therefore, all educational institutions in the country that offer SHS TVL should follow the procedures, timelines, and criteria enclosed in this policy.