Distributed Leadership in DepEd: Head and Master Teachers

Distributed leadership is the view that a school is led by many people working together, not by the principal alone. In a Department of Education (DepEd) public school, many of those people already hold titles: head teachers, master teachers, department heads, grade-level and learning-area chairs, learning action cell (LAC) facilitators and, where there is no principal, teachers-in-charge. This guide explains what distributed leadership means in the research and which DepEd orders give leadership work to whom. It also weighs the evidence that sharing leadership helps learners, and shows how a school head builds a leadership team without dumping work on teachers.

It is written for teachers preparing for the National Assessment for School Heads (NASH), new school heads and teachers-in-charge. The Philippine Professional Standards for School Heads (PPSSH), adopted through DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2020, expect a Career Stage 1 school head to “demonstrate basic knowledge and understanding of the authority, responsibility, and accountability expected of school heads”. Sharing leadership tests that knowledge, because a school head can share the work but not the accountability. Who holds which position, and how a teacher-in-charge is designated, is covered in Principal, Head Teacher or Teacher-in-Charge in DepEd. This post is about how those people lead together.

Key points

• Distributed leadership describes how leadership happens, not who is on the organizational chart. Its best-known authors locate leadership in “the interaction of leaders, followers, and their situation”. It is neither delegation nor the end of the school head’s authority.
• DepEd now names many instructional leaders besides the school head. DepEd Order No. 016, s. 2026 lists head teachers, master teachers, ALS focals, education program supervisors for ALS, and designated personnel such as grade-level coordinators, learning-area coordinators and department heads.
• The 2025 career progression rules set the structure. DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2025 makes master teachers coaches and raters. It sets the terms of a Department Head Designate for teaching and learning and an Assistant School Head Designate for operations and learner support, each by an order of the schools division superintendent (SDS).
• The evidence that sharing leadership raises learning is modest and mixed. Most studies are correlational and rest on teachers’ perceptions. Advocates argue that how leadership is distributed matters most; other reviewers call that an open question.
• Distributed is not dumped. DepEd allows only listed teaching-related assignments and gives administrative tasks to school heads and non-teaching staff. The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II) reports master teachers and department heads still pulled into administrative work.
• About half of public schools had no principal item in October 2026. In many of them a head teacher or teacher-in-charge leads a small staff, often without a master teacher, so leadership must also be borrowed from clusters and the division.
• The school head stays accountable. Master teachers rate teachers and the school head approves. A Learner Formation Officer investigates and the school head decides. The School SBM Coordinator role cannot be delegated.

What is distributed leadership?

The best-known account comes from James Spillane and colleagues, who drew on Chicago elementary schools. Their article on “a distributed perspective” appeared in the Journal of Curriculum Studies in 2004. They change what is studied: “For us the appropriate unit of analysis is not leaders or what they do but leadership activity”. That activity “is constituted – defined or constructed - in the interaction of leaders, followers, and their situation in the execution of particular leadership tasks” (p. 13). Leadership is “stretched over” several people and the tools they use (note 2, p. 53).

Each part of the definition has a DepEd meaning:

1. Leaders. Formal leaders, such as the principal, department heads and master teachers, and informal ones, such as the Grade 2 teacher whom colleagues ask about reading.
2. Followers. Spillane and colleagues treat followers as “a composing element of leadership activity” (p. 26). What teachers do with a coaching session is part of the leadership.
3. The situation. Tools shape practice: “changing the protocol may contribute to changes in the practice of evaluating teaching” (p. 33). In a DepEd school the tools include the Lesson Planning Rubric of DO 016, s. 2026, the LAC plan, the class program and the electronic School Form 7 (eSF7).

Later writers kept this core. Harris, Jones and Ismail (2022) write that distributed leadership “implies a model of shared, collective, and extended leadership practice where the emphasis is upon interdependent interactions rather than individual and independent actions” (p. 2). Supovitz, D’Auria and Spillane (2019), writing for practitioners, put it simply: “Leadership is the influence that emerges out of a series of interactions amongst people (leaders and followers) during the process of engaging in a particular task” (p. 16).

Supovitz and colleagues show the idea with two pictures of one school. The organization chart puts the principal and assistant principal at the top. A map of whom teachers ask about instruction puts an instructional coach and a few teachers at the center, and the principal and assistant principal matter “less so in the instructional network” (pp. 17–18). Both pictures are true, and a school head needs both.

Spillane’s version is first a description: leadership is spread across every school whether anyone plans it or not. Supovitz and colleagues say their own report moves “from a description of leadership to a normative claim” (p. 11). Whether a particular way of spreading leadership helps learners is a separate question, taken up later in this post.

What distributed leadership is not

Distributed, shared and participative leadership

The three terms overlap. Shared leadership usually means teachers taking part in decisions; Louis and colleagues define it as “teachers’ influence over, and their participation in, school-wide decisions with principals” (p. 41). Participative leadership “assumes that the decision-making processes of the group ought to be the central focus of the group”, in the definition Bush (2007) quotes (p. 397). Distributed leadership is broader: Tian and colleagues, summarizing Harris, say it “was essentially about practice, not people” (p. 14). It covers informal influence and the tools of the job, not only who sits in a meeting.

Bush adds a warning that fits DepEd. South Africa gave school management teams greater prominence, yet he saw “little empirical evidence to suggest that it is supplanting, or even supplementing, the principal’s singular leadership” (p. 398). A structure on paper does not by itself share leadership.

Nor is distributed leadership a rival to the other styles. “The question should not be whether to become an instructional leader or a distributed leader, but what wisdom can be derived from each perspective” (Supovitz and colleagues, p. 7). The series overview, Leadership Styles of School Heads: What the Evidence Says, compares the styles; Instructional Leadership for DepEd School Heads and Transformational Leadership for DepEd School Heads cover two of them in depth.

Who leads in a DepEd school besides the principal

Republic Act No. 9155, the Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001, already describes a team. Section 7(E) says the school head “may be assisted by an assistant school head” and “shall form a team with the school teachers/learning facilitators for delivery of quality educational programs, projects and services”. The guide to RA 9155 school head duties covers the school head’s 12 areas.

DepEd’s newest definition names the team. DepEd Order No. 016, s. 2026, the guidelines on lesson planning, defines an instructional leader in Section III:

“Instructional Leader - Refers to School Heads, Head Teachers, Master Teachers, ALS Focals, Education Program Supervisors for ALS, and other personnel designated to perform instructional leadership functions, including but not limited to Grade Level Coordinators, Learning Area Coordinators, Department Heads, and Head Teachers reclassified as Teachers V to VII, subject to succeeding issuances on instructional leadership and supervision.”

The order defines instructional leadership as “the deliberate practice of supporting teaching and learning through evidence-based feedback and contextualized coaching”. It directs school heads to “strategically position instructional leaders to support teachers” and says LAC sessions “may serve as primary venues for peer learning” (paragraph 37(a)). The words “subject to succeeding issuances” show that DepEd expects to say more. As of October 2026, DepEd has issued nothing later on instructional leadership and supervision. The DO 016 guide covers the order’s lesson planning rules.

The table brings the roles together; the sections after it give the sources. Career and HR details are in the human resource management guide.

Master teachers: the school’s coaches

DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2025, on the expanded career progression system, says the role of master teachers has “evolved to include instructional supervision, technical assistance, coaching and mentoring, and collaboration with teacher colleagues”. Under Section 36(b), “Master Teachers shall serve as subject matter experts, and perform instructional supervision, coaching and mentoring, and technical assistance functions to teachers”. They “guide other teachers in the school or cluster of schools” and serve “as observers in the conduct of demonstration teaching or teacher consultants in other schools in the schools division”. They “serve as raters of teacher performance”. Their teaching load is “at most six (6) hours per day”, and “school heads shall design the teachers’ program in a way that they have time to conduct coaching and mentoring”. All of them are “administratively under the School Head, who shall be the Rater of all Master Teachers”.

DepEd Order No. 005, s. 2024, on teachers’ workload, treats their coaching as an ancillary task and adds that “Learning Action Cell (LAC) coordinator/In-Service Training (INSET) Coordinator shall be included in their functions”. Coaching beyond the eight-hour day earns vacation service credits.

There are not yet many of them. In DepEd’s SY 2023–2024 personnel file, master teachers are 7.6% of nationally funded teachers, from 2.6% in BARMM to 9.5% in Region VIII, as the report on teachers and school personnel shows. DBM–DepEd Joint Circular No. 01, s. 2025 aims higher. It sets one master teacher item for every five teachers in elementary schools, counted per learning area in junior high school and per track in senior high school. Multigrade schools, hardship posts and regional science high schools get one for every three teachers (Section 9.1). A standard says how many items a school should have; each item still needs funding.

Head teachers and department heads

Head teachers have long done two jobs: school head of a smaller school, or department head in a secondary school. DepEd’s 2011 guidelines on school head positions, DepEd Order No. 97, s. 2011, treated the “Head Teacher position for secondary schools serving as Academic Department Head” as a separate case. The SY 2023–2024 personnel file lists 26,068 head teacher positions, 14,760 of them in schools with no principal. In 3,264 schools a principal and at least one head teacher are both reported, which in a large school is the department head structure, as the report on principals and head teachers explains.

The position is being phased out, as the post on principals, head teachers and teachers-in-charge explains, but the leadership continues. DO 024, s. 2025 lets retitled head teachers keep their existing functions in the same school by designation, for example “as Assistant School Head or Department Head in the same school by virtue of designation” (Section 34). DepEd Order No. 034, s. 2025 lets secondary head teachers who continue as department heads “do so until they vacate the position”. Only then “shall a Master Teacher be designated as Department Head” (item 27).

Section 36(c) of DO 024, s. 2025 sets the Department Head Designate’s terms; Department Head, Assistant School Head and MT Duties sets them out in full. One is assigned “in Grades 4-6, JHS, and SHS”; in Kindergarten to Grade 3 the designate “shall serve as a Grade Level Head”. The designate comes “from the ranks of Master Teachers in the particular subject/learning area/track”, or another teacher only where the area has no master teacher, needs an “Official Designation Order duly-signed by the SDS”, serves “on rotation, each for a period of one (1) year”, and has “three (3) hours of teaching load”. Appendix 3 says the department head reports to the school principal, supervises “Master Teachers, Teachers”, and oversees “the alignment, contextualization, and implementation of the curriculum”. The duties also include “technical support and supervision to Master Teachers” and the use of “learner profiles and performance data in designing and implementing evidence-based interventions”.

Assistant school heads: operations and learner support

Section 36(d) assigns an Assistant School Head Designate to “schools with an enrolment of more than 1,000 learners”, from “the ranks of Teacher VI, Teacher VII, and Master Teacher I”. DepEd calls this “part of the professional development of prospective or aspiring principals”. The designate needs an SDS designation order and is relieved of teaching, unless “all teachers in the school have been assigned the maximum teaching overload of two (2) hours”.

The order then divides the work: “With the assignment of Department Head Designates focusing on Teaching and Learning Delivery, Assistant School Heads … shall focus on School Operations and Learner Support.” Appendix 4 has the assistant school head supervise “School personnel handling learner support program and other non-teaching personnel” and act “as a liaison between the school and its external partners”. This is DepEd’s clearest formal split of leadership: department heads for teaching and learning, the assistant school head for operations and learner support, and the school head over both.

Coordinators, chairs, LAC facilitators and other designations

Most teachers who lead do so through a teaching-related assignment. Section V.A.4 of DO 005, s. 2024 lists the only ones allowed; the guide to teaching-related assignments explains how to designate them. They are school coordinator (reading or literacy and numeracy, research, Special Needs Education, ICT, guidance and advocacy, inclusive education) and trainer or adviser (school paper, sports, learner government). The list ends with the chair of a grade level or a learning area. Those chairs are the “Grade Level Coordinators” and “Learning Area Coordinators” whom DO 016, s. 2026 counts as instructional leaders.

Under DepEd Order No. 35, s. 2016, the “LAC Leader is the Principal or School Head”, who ensures that each LAC has “an assigned facilitator, preferably a Master Teacher or senior teacher”. The facilitator role “could be assigned on a rotation basis” (Annex 2). The LAC guide covers how sessions run.

A recent designation shows DepEd sharing a task while keeping the decision with the school head. Under DepEd Memorandum No. 055, s. 2026, the school head designates a Learner Formation Officer, with priority to assistant school head designates and head teachers. The officer “shall provide findings and recommendations to the school head, who shall be responsible for determining the appropriate sanctions”. When a teacher is designated, the memorandum counts the role as a teaching-related assignment under the Advocacy component of Guidance and Advocacy, with priority to teachers who have less than six hours of teaching load or no advisory class or other assignment, and with overtime pay under DO 026, s. 2025 for work beyond regular working hours. The child protection guide covers the role.

Who rates whom

Under Table 18 of DepEd Memorandum No. 089, s. 2025, master teachers rate elementary teachers; in junior and senior high school, master teachers, department heads or assistant school heads rate, depending on the level. The school head approves those ratings, and rates teachers directly only where the school has none of these leaders. The memorandum expects “Teachers with supervisory functions, such as Master Teachers and Department Heads” to show leadership competencies such as “Leading People” and “People Development” (item 23). The PMES guide and the instructional supervision guide cover rating, observation and coaching.

How the work fits together

A list of roles is only a division of labor. Spillane and colleagues ask how leaders depend on one another and describe three kinds of interdependence (pp. 21–25).

Problems usually appear at the joins: the coordinator’s analysis never reaches the LAC, or two leaders coach one teacher in different directions. Done well, leaders’ joint work “may amount to more than the sum” of their separate practice (p. 21).

Distributed is not dumped: the limits DepEd sets

DepEd’s 2024 orders draw the lines that keep shared leadership from becoming a polite word for more work.

• Only listed assignments, tied to the SIP. DO 005, s. 2024 allows “only the following teaching-related assignments”, “provided that developmental programs are included in the School Improvement Plan (SIP)”.
• Priority to those with time. “Teachers with less than six (6) hours of teaching load shall be prioritized”, with attention to specialization and workload.
• A written, agreed designation. Each assignment needs “a designation order from the school head duly concurred by the teacher concerned”. The list goes to the SDS for approval and into the eSF7. Work beyond regular hours earns vacation service credits or, under DepEd Order No. 026, s. 2025, overtime pay when it is authorized in advance, done inside the school, lasts at least two hours and comes on top of six hours of teaching that day and thirty that week.
• No administrative tasks for teachers. DepEd Order No. 002, s. 2024 gives “School Heads and non-teaching personnel” the “sole responsibility” for personnel administration, property custodianship, general administrative support, financial management, records management and program management.
• Some roles stay with the school head. Under DepEd Order No. 007, s. 2024, the school head is the School SBM Coordinator, a function that “shall not be delegated nor reassigned, especially to any teaching personnel”.

The rules have not ended the problem. EDCOM II’s final report, citing an IDinsight (2024) study, reports that “Senior teaching personnel such as Master Teachers and Department Heads are frequently called upon to assist with more complex administrative functions, including budgeting and project financing, further diverting their time from instructional leadership” (p. 287). It traces this to “chronic shortages in school support staff”. Robinson and colleagues saw the same in New Zealand, where “Administrative tasks take over the leadership agenda”, and “The same is probably true of heads of department in secondary schools” (p. 211).

The research also warns about motive. Lumby, as Tian and colleagues report, warns that distributed leadership can be used in a way that “reconciles staff to growing workloads and accountability” (p. 25). Louis and colleagues add the other side: sharing leadership does not cut the principal’s work, but nor is it “likely to diminish the principal’s own influence” (p. 103).

Why DepEd’s structure makes sharing harder

Harris and colleagues observe: “In countries where more hierarchical structures are in place and where there are high degrees of accountability, it is unsurprising that levels of distributed leadership practice are reported as low” (p. 11). DepEd is hierarchical, and many decisions are made above the school. In PISA 2022, run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 32% of students in the Philippines attended a school where principals had the main responsibility for hiring teachers (OECD average: 60%). And 50% were in a school where teachers had the main responsibility for choosing learning materials (OECD average: 76%) (OECD 2023, p. 8). A school head can share only the authority the school has.

Two more findings point the same way. Tian and colleagues report a Belgian study in which teachers’ commitment “seemed to drop if multiple leaders supervised them” (p. 24), a warning for schools where a master teacher, a department head and the school head all observe one teacher. And in US case schools, Louis and colleagues found that department heads “provide little to no instructional leadership”, although they “appear to be particularly well-situated” to do so: “a squandered resource” (p. 91). A title does not ensure the leading.

Schools without principals: teachers-in-charge, small and multigrade schools

In October 2026 DepEd told the Senate that about half of public schools (about 23,000 of 45,928) had no principal item, and EDCOM II counts 13,313 schools with neither a principal nor a head teacher (EDCOM II news release, 18 October 2026). Principal, Head Teacher or Teacher-in-Charge in DepEd gives the full figures, the app’s principal shortage page charts them, and the CRLA comparison finds only a modest association between having a principal and fewer struggling readers.

EDCOM II’s final report, using earlier data (18,576 schools, or 48%, without principal items in SY 2024–2025), describes teacher-in-charge arrangements as providing “limited instructional and administrative support” (p. 297). Citing UNESCO, it adds that assistant principals and teachers contribute “meaningfully to school goals” only “when provided with well-defined roles, adequate training, and appropriate incentives” (p. 297).

A teacher-in-charge of a five-teacher multigrade school has no department heads and usually no master teacher. Three things still help:

1. Every teacher leads something. Each teacher may chair a grade or hold one coordinator role from DO 005’s list, under the same rules on designation orders, concurrence and workload as in a large school.
2. Leadership can be borrowed. DO 35, s. 2016 lets multigrade schools hold LACs “by cluster”, grouped by district or division supervisors (items 12 and 17.3). Master teachers are expected to guide teachers in “the school or cluster of schools” and to serve as “teacher consultants in other schools”. Robinson and colleagues argue the same: no one leader has every capability, so schools should “access these capabilities either from inside or outside their school” (p. 47).
3. Shared routines outlast one head. Louis and colleagues studied four US schools with frequent principal turnover. The two that coped had leadership distributed in a “planfully aligned” way (p. 177). It is a small case study, but it fits schools whose teachers-in-charge change often.

Does distributed leadership improve learning? What the evidence says

Possibly, a little, mostly indirectly, and only under the right conditions.

Three cautions apply. Almost all of this evidence is correlational. The early evidence comes mostly from the United States and other English-speaking systems; newer studies cover more countries but still rely largely on teachers’ perceptions. And much of it is written by the idea’s advocates: Leithwood, Harris and Hopkins (2019), for example, state as a “strong claim” that leadership “has a positive influence on school and student outcomes when it is distributed” (p. 14).

The advocates’ reviews stress how leadership is shared. In the early studies, “it was how leadership was distributed that mattered most of all” (Harris and colleagues, p. 3). Distributed leadership was “not intrinsically a positive or negative thing”, and “purposeful or planned leadership distribution was more likely to impact positively” (p. 4). Tian and colleagues name four enabling conditions: “formal leaders’ support, climate of trust, strategic staff policy and utilisation of artefacts in leadership” (p. 18).

For the Philippines the evidence is thinner still. TALIS, the OECD survey of teachers and principals, measures distributed leadership by asking principals whether their school gives staff, parents and students opportunities to take part in school decisions (OECD 2016, Box 3.2, p. 69). The Philippines has never taken part in TALIS, so there are no comparable figures for Filipino schools, and no openly published Philippine study measures distributed leadership against learner outcomes. In a crisis, too, the picture is mixed. Harris and colleagues suggest that distributed leadership “experienced a renaissance during COVID times” (p. 1), but a small qualitative study of schools in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand reports that school leaders were central to the response. The Super El Niño continuity guide discusses that study.

What the school head does: building a leadership team

These steps apply the research and current DepEd orders to a public school, early in the school year.

1. Map who already leads. List the formal leaders, then ask teachers: “When you have a problem with teaching, whom do you ask?” Compare the two lists, as Supovitz and colleagues compare the chart with the advice network (pp. 17–18).
2. Decide what to share and what to keep. Supovitz and colleagues, drawing on Victor Vroom’s decision framework, describe four ways to decide: alone, after conferring, by delegating, or together (pp. 27–28). “Not all decisions need to be made collaboratively” (p. 29). The first table below applies this.
3. Form the leadership team. In a large school: the assistant school head designate, department heads and master teachers. In a mid-sized school: master teachers, grade-level chairs and key coordinators. In a small school: the whole faculty, with a cluster master teacher or the district supervisor invited.
4. Write a responsibility matrix. For each SIP priority, name one responsible leader, the contributors, and how results reach you. Back each role with a designation order and the eSF7.
5. Protect leaders’ time. Put coaching periods in master teachers’ class programs, keep department heads to three hours of teaching, and keep administrative tasks with non-teaching staff. Approve overtime pay or service credits for work beyond regular hours.
6. Rotate and share tools. Rotate LAC facilitation (DO 35, s. 2016); department head designations already rotate yearly. Agree on common tools, such as the DO 016 Lesson Planning Rubric and the PMES coaching forms, so that several leaders work the same way.
7. Give each teacher one clear coach. Follow the PMES matrix so that teachers do not get conflicting advice from several leaders.
8. Review and develop. Each quarter, ask what changed in classrooms and where work fell between roles. Record leadership goals in each leader’s Individual Development Plan, so the team also grows the next school heads.

An example matrix for a public elementary school with 30 teachers, a master teacher each in English and Mathematics, and six grade-level chairs:

The change management guide shows master teachers and coordinators acting as change agents, and the School Governance Council guide extends the sharing to parents and partners. The app’s guide to the roles of a school head puts them in one place.

Distributed leadership and the PPSSH: strands and Career Stage 1 indicators

The PPSSH builds sharing into its higher career stages. At Career Stage 3, indicator 3.2.3 reads: “Engage school personnel such as master teachers, head teachers and department heads in providing technical assistance to teachers on teaching standards and pedagogies within and across learning areas to improve their teaching practice.” Indicator 4.6.3 speaks of “fostering shared governance and accountability”. Career Stage 1 starts with knowing who those people are and what the rules let them do. The table gives the Career Stage 1 indicators this topic touches, in the words of DO 024, s. 2020.

The PPSSH guide lists every indicator at all four career stages, and the Domain 4 guide covers leadership development in individuals and teams.

Practice: how the NASH may test this

DepEd Memorandum No. 069, s. 2025 says the NASH covers “conceptual and situational critical thinking questions aligned with” the PPSSH, using the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy. On distributed leadership, expect conceptual items on what sharing leadership means and does not mean. Expect also situational items in which a plausible assignment breaks a workload rule or leaves a leader without support. The three items below are original practice items, not actual or recalled NASH items. Each option is scored 3-2-1-0, as in the NASH practice questions with answers. Timed sets are on the NASH Reviewer assessment page.

Question 1

Indicator 4.6.1, Leadership development in individuals and teams. Career Stage 1, Situational, Moderate.

You are the newly designated school head of a public high school with 52 teachers, four department heads and six master teachers. Reading results are low in every grade, and you plan to form a team to lead a reading program. Before naming the team, you want to know who already leads instruction in the school. What is the most appropriate first step?

• A. Give the whole reading program to the English department head, since reading falls under that learning area and department heads report directly to the principal.
• B. Ask the teachers whom they go to for help with teaching, and compare the answers with the designations on file to find the formal and informal leaders.
• C. Open the reading team to every teacher who volunteers, since distributed leadership means that anyone who wishes to lead should be given the chance.
• D. Name the six master teachers as the reading team at once, since DepEd’s 2025 career progression rules make master teachers the school’s coaches.

Answer and explanation

Best answer: B. Points: A = 1, B = 3, C = 0, D = 2.

• A (1 point, Unistructural). It uses one relevant fact, the department head’s role in the curriculum, but hands a school-wide problem to one person and treats delegation as distributed leadership.
• B (3 points, Relational). This connects the formal structure with the actual pattern of influence among teachers, which is what identifying the strengths and potential of individuals and teams requires.
• C (0 points, Prestructural). It misreads the concept. Distributed leadership is not open entry to leadership roles, and the option ignores both strengths and existing designations.
• D (2 points, Multistructural). Master teachers belong on the list and the policy is right, but the option skips the department heads and the informal leaders whom teachers already ask for help.

Why. This aligns with Career Stage 1 expectations because indicator 4.6.1 asks a school head to identify the leadership strengths and potential of individuals and teams. Research on distributed leadership compares the organization chart with the network of whom teachers ask for advice, and finds that the two differ. DO 024, s. 2025 sets the formal roles of master teachers and department heads, so a school head needs both sources. The option that names the master teachers gets the policy right but misses the rest of the school’s leadership.

Indicator 4.6.1: Identify strengths, capabilities and potentials of individuals and teams in performing leadership roles and responsibilities.

Sources: Supovitz, D’Auria and Spillane (2019), pp. 17–18; DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2025, Sec. 36; DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2020.

Question 2

Indicator 2.4.1, Management of staff. Career Stage 1, Situational, Moderate.

You are the school head of a public elementary school with 28 teachers. The school needs a property custodian and an adviser for its new school paper. Ms. Cruz, a Teacher III with six hours of teaching, is a class adviser and the school’s reading coordinator, and she volunteers for both roles. Mr. Lim, a Teacher I with four and a half hours of teaching and no other assignment, writes well. What is the most appropriate action?

• A. Accept Ms. Cruz’s offer for both roles, since she volunteered, has led the reading program well, and is trusted by the other teachers.
• B. Designate Mr. Lim as school paper adviser with his concurrence and record it in the eSF7, and give property custodianship to non-teaching staff.
• C. Designate Mr. Lim as school paper adviser and Ms. Cruz as property custodian, since custodianship takes little time, and issue both orders.
• D. Designate Mr. Lim for both roles, since he has less than six hours of teaching load and teachers with lighter loads get priority.

Answer and explanation

Best answer: B. Points: A = 0, B = 3, C = 1, D = 2.

• A (0 points, Prestructural). It overloads a teacher who already carries a full load and two roles, and it gives a teacher an administrative task that DO 002, s. 2024 removed from teachers.
• B (3 points, Relational). This applies DO 005, s. 2024 to the teaching-related assignment (priority to a lighter load, a designation order the teacher concurs with, the eSF7) and DO 002, s. 2024 to the administrative task.
• C (1 point, Unistructural). The school paper assignment is right, but property custodianship is an administrative task, and it lands on the teacher with the fullest load.
• D (2 points, Multistructural). It applies the priority rule correctly to both roles but misses that property custodianship is not a teaching-related assignment at all.

Why. This aligns with Career Stage 1 expectations because indicator 2.4.1 asks for knowledge of the issuances on managing school staff. DO 005, s. 2024 lists “School Paper” among the teaching-related assignments, gives priority to “Teachers with less than six (6) hours of teaching load”, and requires “a designation order from the school head duly concurred by the teacher concerned”. DO 002, s. 2024 gives “Property/Physical Facilities Custodianship” to school heads and non-teaching personnel. The option that gives both roles to Mr. Lim follows one rule and breaks the other.

Indicator 2.4.1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of laws, policies, guidelines and issuances on managing school staff.

Sources: DepEd Order No. 005, s. 2024, Sec. V.A.4; DepEd Order No. 002, s. 2024, Sec. V.A; DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2020.

Question 3

Indicator 4.5.1, Professional development of school personnel. Career Stage 1, Situational, Moderate.

You are the teacher-in-charge of a public multigrade elementary school with five teachers, none of them a master teacher. Classroom walkthroughs show that the teachers struggle to teach reading to two grades in one class. The nearest schools in the district face the same problem. What is the most appropriate action?

• A. Wait until the division assigns a master teacher to the school, since coaching and technical assistance are master teachers’ functions under DepEd’s 2025 rules.
• B. Coach all five teachers yourself in every learning area, since in a school without a master teacher the school head must give all the instructional support.
• C. Set up a cluster LAC on multigrade reading with nearby schools, ask the division for a master teacher as consultant, and rotate session facilitation.
• D. Ask the most senior teacher to run all professional development for the year, so that you can give your time to the school’s reports and records.

Answer and explanation

Best answer: C. Points: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 0.

• A (1 point, Unistructural). Master teachers do coach and give technical assistance, but waiting leaves the teachers without help for an unknown time.
• B (2 points, Multistructural). It acts on the need and keeps the school head close to teaching, but it rests all support on one person and ignores expertise outside the school.
• C (3 points, Relational). This links the teachers’ shared need, the cluster LACs that DO 35, s. 2016 allows for multigrade schools, master teachers’ role as consultants to other schools, and rotation that builds teachers’ own leadership.
• D (0 points, Prestructural). It hands professional development to one teacher so that the school head can step back from teaching and learning. That is dumping, not distributed leadership.

Why. This aligns with Career Stage 1 expectations because indicator 4.5.1 asks for knowledge of professional development that addresses performance gaps among school personnel. DO 35, s. 2016 allows LACs “in clusters if multigrade schools prefer to conduct them by cluster” and lets the facilitator role rotate. DO 024, s. 2025 expects master teachers to guide teachers in “the school or cluster of schools” and to serve as “teacher consultants in other schools in the schools division”. The option in which the school head coaches everyone alone shows commitment but uses only the expertise inside one small school.

Indicator 4.5.1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of professional development in enhancing strengths and in addressing performance gaps among school personnel.

Sources: DepEd Order No. 35, s. 2016, items 12 and 17.3 and Annex 2; DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2025, Sec. 36(b); DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2020.

Frequently asked questions

What is distributed leadership in education?

It is the view that a school’s leadership comes from the interaction of many people, formal and informal leaders, teachers, and the tools they use, not from the principal alone. Spillane and colleagues locate leadership activity in “the interaction of leaders, followers, and their situation”. It is not delegation, and it does not remove the principal’s authority or accountability.

What is the difference between distributed and shared leadership?

Shared leadership usually means teachers’ influence over, and participation in, school-wide decisions with the principal. Distributed leadership is broader: it looks at how leadership practice is spread across formal and informal leaders and the school’s routines and tools. One review sums up the difference: distributed leadership is “about practice, not people”.

What are the duties of a master teacher in DepEd?

Under DO 024, s. 2025, master teachers serve as subject matter experts and perform “instructional supervision, coaching and mentoring, and technical assistance functions to teachers”. They rate teachers, lead in preparing instructional materials, and serve as observers of demonstration teaching or as consultants to other schools in the division. DO 005, s. 2024 adds LAC or INSET coordinator. Their teaching load is at most six hours a day, with time left for coaching.

What does a department head do in a DepEd school?

Under DO 024, s. 2025, a Department Head Designate oversees the curriculum in a learning area, supports and supervises master teachers, and leads the use of learner data for interventions. The designate normally comes from the area’s master teachers (another teacher only when the area has none), teaches three hours, and serves one year by an SDS designation order. Secondary head teachers already serving as department heads may continue until they leave the position.

Who are the instructional leaders under DO 016, s. 2026?

DO 016, s. 2026 names “School Heads, Head Teachers, Master Teachers, ALS Focals, Education Program Supervisors for ALS, and other personnel designated to perform instructional leadership functions”. Its examples are grade-level coordinators, learning-area coordinators, department heads, and head teachers reclassified as Teachers V to VII.

Does distributed leadership improve student achievement?

The evidence is modest and mixed. One large US study, reported in a 2016 review, found an indirect but significant effect on mathematics and reading, but reviews call the evidence fragmented, mostly correlational and based largely on teachers’ perceptions. Advocates argue that planned, aligned distribution matters more than how widely leadership is spread. No openly published Philippine study measures it against learning outcomes.

More on school leadership

This post is part of a series on what a school head does under the DepEd rules in force today. Related posts:

• Leadership Styles of School Heads: What the Evidence Says
• Instructional Leadership for DepEd School Heads
• Transformational Leadership for DepEd School Heads
• Principal, Head Teacher or Teacher-in-Charge in DepEd
• RA 9155 at 25: Why Shared Governance Has Not Happened
• School Governance Council, PTA and Partners: A Guide
• OPCRF for DepEd School Heads in 2026: What Applies Now
• Human Resource Management for DepEd School Heads
• DepEd Learning Action Cell (LAC) Guidelines: DO 35, s. 2016
• DepEd Instructional Supervision: Observing and Coaching
• DepEd PMES for Teachers: DM 089, s. 2025 for School Heads
• Change Management in Schools: A Guide for DepEd School Heads
• On the app: The roles of a school head, the principal shortage, in numbers and the PPSSH guide

Sources

DepEd issuances and laws:

• Republic Act No. 9155, Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001, Section 7(E), Official Gazette.
• DepEd Order No. 97, s. 2011, Revised Guidelines on the Allocation and Reclassification of School Head Positions, Section III.3.
• DepEd Order No. 35, s. 2016, The Learning Action Cell as a K to 12 Basic Education Program School-Based Continuing Professional Development Strategy, items 12 and 17.3 and Annex 2.
• DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2020, National Adoption and Implementation of the Philippine Professional Standards for School Heads.
• DepEd Order No. 002, s. 2024, Immediate Removal of Administrative Tasks of Public School Teachers, Section V.A.
• DepEd Order No. 005, s. 2024, Rationalization of Teachers’ Workload in Public Schools and Payment of Teaching Overload, Sections V.A.3 and V.A.4.
• DepEd Order No. 007, s. 2024, Policy Guidelines on the Implementation of the Revised School-Based Management (SBM) System.
• DBM–DepEd Joint Circular No. 01, s. 2025, Modified Position Classification and Compensation Scheme and System of Career Progression of Teachers and School Heads, Section 9.1.
• DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2025, Guidelines on the Implementation of the Expanded Career Progression System for Teachers and School Heads, Enclosure No. 1, Sections 34 and 36 and Appendices 3 and 4.
• DepEd Order No. 026, s. 2025, Guidelines on the Payment of Overtime Services of Teachers, Sections V and VII.
• DepEd Order No. 034, s. 2025, Amendments and Clarifications to DepEd Order No. 024, s. 2025, item 27.
• DepEd Order No. 016, s. 2026, Guidelines on Lesson Planning and Learning Design, Section III and paragraph 37.
• DepEd Memorandum No. 069, s. 2025, Administration of the National Assessment for School Heads for Fiscal Year 2025.
• DepEd Memorandum No. 089, s. 2025, Guidelines on the Multi-Year Performance Management and Evaluation System for Teachers, item 23 and Table 18.
• DepEd Memorandum No. 055, s. 2026, Clarificatory Guidelines on the Designation of Learner Formation Officers in Schools.

EDCOM II, OECD and data:

• EDCOM II (2026), Turning Point: A Decade of Necessary Reform (2026–2035), Final Report, pp. 287 and 297. The guide to the EDCOM II final report summarizes it.
• EDCOM II, “EDCOM pushes for 2027 budget to close the gap in school principals nationwide”, news release, 18 October 2026.
• OECD (2023), PISA 2022 Results: Factsheets, Philippines, p. 8.
• OECD, TALIS participants, participation summary for all cycles, as of 30 October 2026.
• NASH Reviewer data reports: principals and head teachers, SY 2023-2024, teachers and school personnel, SY 2023-2024 and CRLA results in schools with and without a principal.

Research:

• Bush, T. (2007). Educational leadership and management: Theory, policy, and practice. South African Journal of Education, 27(3), 391–406. ERIC full text.
• Harris, A., Jones, M., & Ismail, N. (2022). Distributed leadership: Taking a retrospective and contemporary view of the evidence base. School Leadership & Management, 42(5), 438–456. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2022.2109620. Open access (CC BY-NC-ND); page numbers are from the online-first version, pp. 1–19.
• Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2019). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership revisited. School Leadership & Management, 40(1), 5–22. Accepted manuscript, University of Bolton repository; page numbers are from that manuscript.
• Louis, K. S., Leithwood, K., Wahlstrom, K. L., & Anderson, S. E. (2010). Learning from leadership: Investigating the links to improved student learning. University of Minnesota and University of Toronto, for The Wallace Foundation. Wallace Foundation.
• OECD (2016). School leadership for learning: Insights from TALIS 2013. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264258341-en.
• Robinson, V., Hohepa, M., & Lloyd, C. (2009). School leadership and student outcomes: Identifying what works and why. Best evidence synthesis iteration. New Zealand Ministry of Education. Education Counts.
• Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2004). Towards a theory of leadership practice: A distributed perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(1), 3–34 (doi:10.1080/0022027032000106726). Page numbers are from the authors’ manuscript, “Distributed leadership: Toward a theory of school leadership practice” (Internet Archive copy).
• Supovitz, J. A., D’Auria, J., & Spillane, J. P. (2019). Meaningful & sustainable school improvement with distributed leadership. Consortium for Policy Research in Education. ERIC full text.
• Tian, M., Risku, M., & Collin, K. (2016). A meta-analysis of distributed leadership from 2002 to 2013: Theory development, empirical evidence and future research focus. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 44(1), 146–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143214558576. Page numbers are the PDF pages of the authors’ accepted manuscript in the University of Jyväskylä repository.

Written by Mark Anthony Llego for NASH Reviewer. Sources: Republic Act No. 9155; DepEd Orders No. 97, s. 2011, No. 35, s. 2016, No. 024, s. 2020, No. 002, No. 005 and No. 007, s. 2024, No. 024, No. 026 and No. 034, s. 2025 and No. 016, s. 2026; DBM–DepEd Joint Circular No. 01, s. 2025; DepEd Memoranda No. 069 and No. 089, s. 2025 and No. 055, s. 2026; EDCOM II; OECD; and the research listed above.