# Is the School Improvement Plan working?

This is the Markdown copy of [Is the School Improvement Plan working?](https://nash.com.ph/sip-policy-review), published by NASH Reviewer, an independent practice platform not affiliated with DepEd, BHROD, or NEAP.

*A policy review for school heads*

What DepEd asks of school heads in the School Improvement Plan, and what it gives them: the law and policy in force, the research, the rules added since 2015, and the evidence on how plans are written and used.

Policy and data current as of 29 October 2026. A document review: every fact comes from a law, a DepEd issuance, an official report, or a published study.

By [Mark Anthony Llego](https://nash.com.ph/blog/author/mark-anthony-llego) · Published October 30, 2026

- **22**: Requirements in force that put content into the SIP or attach conditions to it (35 issuances)
- **₱2.29B**: School Innovation and Improvement Fund for 2026, mainly for SIP and AIP activities
- **About half**: Public schools still without a principal item (about 23,000 of 45,928), October 2026
- **2015**: The year of the SIP order still in force

## Key findings

What this review found, in brief. The sections below give the evidence and the source for each.

1. **The law makes the SIP the school head’s job.** The Governance of Basic Education Act gives school heads “authority, accountability and responsibility” for “developing the school education program and school improvement plan.”
2. **The SIP order has never been revised.** DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015 and its SIP Guidebook still govern how the plan is made. Later rules have been added around them: a 2018 appraisal process, and workload and calendar changes since 2024. DepEd’s Basic Education Development Plan (BEDP) 2030 promised a “revised SIP policy,” but none has been issued.
3. **The 2015 design fits what research says about improving schools.** It asks schools to start from data, listen to learners, find root causes, focus on a few priorities, and test solutions on a small scale first.
4. **Since 2015, DepEd has kept adding to the SIP, without ever consolidating.** In the issuances we could search, 35 in force require something to be written into the SIP or tie money, staff, or eligibility to it. Counting each requirement once, however many issuances state it, that is 22 distinct requirements. Six of them were first issued in 2025. No issuance brings them together.
5. **The plan is tied to money, but the money a school can shape is small.** The School Innovation and Improvement Fund (₱2.29 billion in 2026) goes mainly to SIP and AIP activities in literacy and numeracy. The local Special Education Fund may pay only for items in the approved SIP and division plan. After mandatory expenses, the first listed use of school MOOE is the SIP’s activities. Yet in 2023, school heads from Iloilo and Davao told EDCOM II that 30 to 70 percent of their MOOE went to utility bills. A new MOOE formula raised allocations sharply for 2026; its effect on what plans can fund is not yet documented.
6. **About half of all schools still have no principal item.** In October 2026 DepEd told the Senate that about half of public schools (around 23,000 of 45,928) lacked principal items, down from 55 percent in January 2026. The proposed 2027 budget funds no new principal positions. In those schools a teacher-in-charge leads the plan, without a principal’s position or pay and often without preparation for the role.
7. **The evidence on SIPs in practice is thin, and it points to compliance.** A 2014 survey found that fewer than half of parents knew their school had a plan. DepEd’s BEDP states that most SIPs focused on facilities rather than teaching and learning. Participants in EDCOM II’s consultations described plans written as “lip service,” a view later reports restate. No national evaluation of whether SIPs improve learning has been published.

## Why the SIP matters now

Filipino learners are far behind where they should be, and the School Improvement Plan is where national policy meets a particular school.

- In the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), only 16 percent of Filipino 15-year-olds reached the baseline proficiency level in mathematics, against 69 percent across OECD countries. In reading the figures were 24 percent against 74 percent, and in science 23 percent against 76 percent (OECD, 2023, pp. 2–3).
- In the 2019 Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics, only 10 percent of Grade 5 learners reached the reading level expected at the end of primary school (DepEd, 2021, p. 2).

Policy answers to this crisis are usually national: curriculum, teacher hiring, classrooms, assessment. Yet every national program eventually lands in a particular school, with its own learners, teachers, parents, and problems. The School Improvement Plan (SIP) is where that happens on paper. In it, a school says what its learners most need, why, and what the school community will do about it over three years. Its yearly slice, the Annual Implementation Plan (AIP), says what will happen this year, who is responsible, and what it will cost.

Three developments make the SIP more important in 2026 than at any time since its rules were written.

- **Money now follows the plan.** In 2025 DepEd created the School Innovation and Improvement Fund (SIIF). For 2026 it allocated ₱2,289,250,000 from the national budget to the public schools that do not manage their own funds, ₱50,000 to ₱85,700 per school (the formula allows up to ₱110,000). Schools do not submit funding proposals; the main use of the fund is activities “identified in the approved SIP and specifically determined in the AIP,” focused on literacy and numeracy (RA 12314; DM 48, s. 2026). The local Special Education Fund (SEF) may pay only for items in the approved SIP and the division’s plan, and after mandatory expenses the first listed use of school MOOE is the activities in the approved SIP and AIP.
- **Many schools write the plan without a principal.** In October 2026 DepEd told the Senate that about half of public schools (around 23,000 of 45,928) still lacked principal items, down from 55 percent in January 2026 (EDCOM II, 2026c). DepEd and the budget department have adopted a standard of one principal item per school (DBM–DepEd JC 01, s. 2025). The budget department approved 6,000 new School Principal I positions for 2026, but the proposed 2027 budget funds none (EDCOM II, 2026c).
- **The rules have aged.** The SIP order dates from 2015. Since then DepEd has changed its school-based management system, performance management, curriculum, school calendar, enrollment policy, and data systems, and it has issued many orders that tell schools to put something new into the SIP.

This paper asks one question: does Philippine policy let the SIP do its job, which is to help a school head and the school community improve learning? It looks at what the law and DepEd require, what research says good school improvement planning looks like, what DepEd has added to the plan since 2015, whether schools have what the plan assumes, and what the evidence says about how SIPs are actually written and used.

### What this means for you

- **School heads:** The SIP is more than a form for the division. It shapes what your SIIF and your LGU’s SEF can pay for, and it comes first among the uses of your MOOE. A plan that names your real learning priorities is also the plan that lets you spend on them.
- **Aspiring school heads:** Planning is a core standard in the [Philippine Professional Standards for School Heads](https://nash.com.ph/ppssh) (Strand 1.2, “School planning and implementation”). Knowing how the SIP works, and where it breaks down, is part of being ready to lead.

## How this review was done

This is a document review. We did not interview anyone or collect new data; every factual statement comes from a primary source and was checked by an independent reviewer.

### What we searched

- The Governance of Basic Education Act (RA 9155) and other laws that mention the SIP.
- DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015, its SIP Guidebook, and all 16 annexes.
- The DepEd Orders issued from 2015 to October 2026 and the DepEd Memoranda issued from 2020 to October 2026 that were available to us as searchable text (about 540 orders and 600 memoranda), searched for the phrase “school improvement plan.” We read every passage found and checked whether each issuance is still in force.
- The 39 issuances missing from those collections, from the original PDFs or DepEd’s website. We searched the 16 that have text; for the 23 scanned or unavailable ones, we read the titles and read further where a title suggested a link to the SIP.
- Targeted searches for a law, a joint circular, and two regional memoranda that the phrase search could not reach.
- The three reports of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II, 2024a, 2025, 2026a), the studies they cite on school-based management, and EDCOM II’s news releases on principal staffing and school funds (2024–2026).
- DepEd’s Basic Education Development Plan 2030 and its Quality Basic Education Development Plan 2025–2035.
- Published research on school-based management, school leadership, and school improvement planning.

### How we judged the evidence

- We use “studies find” only for meta-analyses and for studies with quasi-experimental or long-term designs.
- We use “is associated with” for correlations, and “reports” for case studies and consultations.
- We use “DepEd requires” only for issuance text.
- We say “we found no…” only after a documented search.
- Our own judgments are marked as such.

### Limits

- Twenty-three orders and memoranda from the period were scans or unavailable as text. We checked them by title, and read further only where a title suggested a link to the SIP.
- We did not search memoranda issued before 2020, orders issued before 2015, or regional and division issuances, apart from the examples named.
- Most research on the quality of school plans comes from other countries.
- No national dataset on SIP quality exists. The limits are listed in full under [Limitations and what we don’t know](https://nash.com.ph/sip-policy-review#limits).

## What the SIP is, in law and policy

RA 9155 gives the plan to the school head; DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015 and its Guidebook say how it is made.

### The legal basis

RA 9155 (2001) says there “shall be a school head for all public elementary schools and public high schools or a cluster thereof.” The school head is “both an instructional leader and administrative manager.” Among the school head’s twelve areas of “authority, accountability and responsibility,” the fourth is “developing the school education program and school improvement plan” (RA 9155, Sec. 7, E).

The law does not say how the plan should be made. DepEd sets that out in DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015, Guidelines on the Enhanced School Improvement Planning (SIP) Process and the School Report Card (SRC), dated 29 September 2015. The order makes the enclosed SIP Guidebook “the official reference in the preparation and implementation of the SIP and SRC.” It has no end date: it “shall remain in effect, unless sooner repealed, amended, or rescinded.”

The Guidebook cites the legal basis as “RA 9155, Chapter 1, Section 7.D.4.” The SIP provision is in Section 7, part E (School Level), item 4.

### A short history

- **2003–2005.** Schools in 23 districts covered by the World Bank-supported Third Elementary Education Project (TEEP) wrote five-year SIPs “in partnership with parents and the community using data such as student achievement,” led by the principal or head teacher, then annual plans and a report card. Principals were trained to lead the process, and the schools received their MOOE in cash rather than in kind, to be used according to the annual plan (Khattri, Ling, & Jha, 2010).
- **After 2006.** School-based management (SBM) spread to the rest of the country. Schools again wrote five-year SIPs, and DepEd allocated SBM grants “based on significance of their SIP/AIP” (Yamauchi, 2014).
- **2015.** DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015 revised the 2009 SIP Manual, shortened the cycle to three school years, and built in the tools of DepEd’s Continuous Improvement program.
- **After 2015.** SBM grants appear to have stopped. The last grant order, DepEd Order No. 45, s. 2015, covered FY 2014 funds (Laguda, Aquino, Cangayao, & Tagle, 2025, p. 39).

### What the 2015 process asks for

The SIP is “a roadmap that lays down specific interventions that a school, with the help of the community and other stakeholders, will undertake within a period of three consecutive school years.” Its aim is to improve the three “key result areas” of basic education: access, quality, and governance.

**Who sits on the School-Community Planning Team**

At least seven people, with these seats required. At least one member should also sit on the school’s governance council; if members are added, the total should stay an odd number, and a quorum is more than half.

- **School head** Team leader.
- **Student representative** A learner’s seat at the table.
- **Teacher representative** One of the school’s teachers.
- **Parent representative** A parent of a learner in the school.
- **Barangay or LGU representative** The local government.
- **Barangay Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council** A member of the council.
- **School Child Protection Committee** A member of the committee.

Source: SIP Guidebook, Activity 1.2 (DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015)

**The SIP cycle: eleven steps**

A preparatory step, then three phases (Assess, Plan, Act), ending with a check on progress that returns the school to Assess.

1. **Prepare (Step 1)** The school head and a small team gather school and community data (Annex 1A), map out-of-school children (Annex 1B), and run the child-friendly school survey, the child protection checklist, and student-led hazard mapping.
2. **Assess (Steps 2–3)** The planning team compares the school’s data with division targets and ranks priority improvement areas (PIAs) by strategic importance, urgency, magnitude, and feasibility. Project teams “listen to the voice of the learners and other stakeholders,” a step the Guidebook says “should not be skipped,” map the school processes behind each problem, pick one narrow “area of focus,” and find its root cause.
3. **Plan (Steps 4–8)** Project teams propose solutions that address the root cause and are “within the control of the school,” and write project designs with a work plan and budget. The planning team then writes the SIP and the year’s AIP.
4. **Act (Steps 9–10)** Teams “test it first on a small population to reduce the risk of failure,” then roll out what works.
5. **Check progress (Step 11)** The planning team reviews progress at mid-year and year-end, and the next year begins again at Assess.

Source: SIP Guidebook, flowchart and Steps 1–11 (DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015)

The point of the narrow area of focus is “to aim your improvement efforts on a particular problem rather than attempting to solve all the problems at once.” For problems in teaching and learning, the Guidebook suggests drawing the project team from the school’s Learning Action Cells, so improvement work and teacher professional learning are the same activity.

The steps themselves, with the templates, are explained in our [School Improvement Plan guide](https://nash.com.ph/blog/deped-school-improvement-plan) and the [root cause analysis guide](https://nash.com.ph/blog/root-cause-analysis-school-improvement-plan).

- **What happens to it.** All planning team members sign the SIP, and the school submits it to the Schools Division Office (SDO) at the start of the cycle. In each later year the school submits its AIP, project monitoring reports, and year-end School Report Card, “no later than the second week of May.” The SDO’s School Governance and Operations Division is to monitor progress and conduct “a summative evaluation of the SIP at the end of every cycle.” At the Central Office, the School Effectiveness Division and the planning office are to “monitor the progress of SIP implementation quarterly and evaluate the effectiveness of the enhanced process annually.”
- **Approval.** DepEd orders have long referred to the “approved” SIP, for example in the MOOE rules (DO 13, s. 2016; DO 8, s. 2019), yet DepEd Order No. 44 itself has no approval step. The current procedure is set out in an unnumbered Central Office memorandum of 27 November 2018, which DepEd’s NCR office forwarded to its divisions in 2019: a Division Appraisal Committee scores the plan with a quality-assurance tool, and if it meets expectations the Schools Division Superintendent approves it and issues a certificate of acceptance (DepEd–NCR, 2019). The Quality Basic Education Development Plan adds that “school plans shall be appraised by the SDO” (DepEd, 2025f, p. 28).
- **The School Report Card (SRC).** The school reports to its community at least twice a year, at the October and March assemblies, on enrollment, dropouts, promotion, test results, literacy, ratios, and project status. The order says the SRC “is not for planning and accountability; it is a communication and advocacy tool,” and that it “shall not be used as basis for the” Performance-Based Bonus.
- **Who pays for it.** DepEd Order No. 44 says the costs of implementing the policy “shall be charged against local funds.”

### How the SIP relates to other school plans

**The SIP and the plans around it**

Teachers and parents often confuse the SIP with neighbouring plans and systems.

| Plan or system | What it is | Current rule | Relation to the SIP |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| School-Based Management (SBM) | Decentralized decision-making, assessed by a yearly self-assessment against six dimensions | DepEd Order No. 7, s. 2024 (repealed DO 83, s. 2012) | Self-assessment results feed “strategic and implementation plans,” in practice the SIP and AIP |
| School Improvement Plan (SIP) | The school’s three-year improvement plan | DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015 | The plan itself |
| Annual Implementation Plan (AIP) | The year-by-year slice of the SIP: activities, persons, schedule, budget | DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015; Guidebook Annex 10 | Must follow the SIP; MOOE rules require it in calendar-year format (DO 8, s. 2019) |
| School Report Card (SRC) | A twice-yearly report to the community | DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015 | Reports SIP project status; “not for planning and accountability” |
| Learning and Service Continuity Plan (LSCP) | The school’s plan for learning during disasters and emergencies | DO 22, s. 2024, as changed by DO 14, s. 2026 | Now “developed annually before the beginning of each school year” and “updated every term”; the 2024 rule had it crafted every three years alongside the SIP |
| Monitoring and evaluation plan | The school’s M&E plan | DepEd Order No. 29, s. 2022 | Schools develop an “M&E plan for their respective School improvement plan” |

Source: The issuances named in each row

**Where the SIP sits in DepEd’s chain of plans**

1. **National plans** BEDP 2030 strategies “will be mainstreamed through the Regional Basic Education Development Plan, the Division Education Development Plan, and the School Improvement Plan.”
2. **Regional and division plans** The Guidebook asks schools to align their objectives with division targets.
3. **School Improvement Plan and AIP** The school’s three-year plan and its yearly slice, with the M&E plan and the SBM self-assessment as inputs.
4. **Funds and reporting** MOOE, the SIIF, and the SEF pay for what the plan contains; the School Report Card reports back to the community.

Source: DepEd Order No. 24, s. 2022; SIP Guidebook; EDCOM II (2025), Figure 11, p. 347

### What this means for you

- **School heads and teachers-in-charge:** The planning team’s seats are set by policy. Check that yours are filled, including a learner and a child-protection member. Plan around one narrow area of focus per priority: the process was designed for depth, not coverage.
- **Aspiring school heads:** Learn the eleven steps well enough to explain each one to a parent. The PPSSH expects an aspiring school head (Career Stage 1) to “demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the phases of development and implementation of school plans” (indicator 1.2.1), and, at later stages, to “engage the school community” in them (1.2.3).

## What research says about school improvement planning

The SIP is a leadership tool. To judge its design, we ask what effective school leaders do, and what is known about school-based management and school plans.

### What school leaders do that matters

A widely cited synthesis of research on school leadership concluded that “leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school” (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004, p. 5).

Leithwood and colleagues later revisited a related set of claims, first published in 2008, against newer and stronger evidence (Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2020). They describe leadership’s effect on the school organization, and through it on teaching and learning, as significant but moderate in size. Most of it is indirect: leaders improve learning by improving key classroom and school conditions, such as teachers’ motivation, ability, and working conditions, and by encouraging home routines that support learning. They group effective practices into four domains: setting directions; building relationships and developing people; redesigning the organization to support desired practices; and improving the instructional program.

For the SIP, this means a plan matters only if it changes those conditions: what teachers do, the time and materials they have, how they work together, and how families support learning.

The working environment matters in its own right. In a study of teachers in one large U.S. school district, teachers in schools with more supportive professional environments improved more over time. After ten years, those in schools at the 75th percentile of environment ratings had improved 38 percent more than those at the 25th percentile (Kraft & Papay, 2014).

### What is known about school-based management

SBM gives schools more say over decisions and money, and in many countries it includes some form of school improvement plan. A World Bank review of the international evidence offers three cautions (Bruns, Filmer, & Patrinos, 2011):

- **Rigorous evidence is scarce.** “Only a very few rigorous studies of the impact of SBM exist” (p. 122).
- **It takes time.** In the United States, SBM reforms needed “about five years before any fundamental changes occur at the school level,” and about eight years before changes appeared in test scores (p. 129).
- **Capacity has to be built.** SBM projects should “include a component to build the managerial capacity of parents, teachers, and other key players” (p. 129).

The Philippines has two rigorous studies of its own, both of SBM in the 2000s, when SIPs came with training and more control over money. In the 23 TEEP districts, SBM had “a statistically significant, albeit small, overall positive effect on average school-level test scores” (Khattri, Ling, & Jha, 2010). In divisions that adopted SBM after 2006, SBM raised the average National Achievement Test score by 4.2 points over three years, with a larger gain in mathematics (Yamauchi, 2014). In both, the plan was one part of a package, so the studies cannot tell whether the plan, the training, or the money made the difference. They do show that the Philippine version of SBM, when plans came with resources, was associated with modest gains.

### What is known about school plans themselves

Research on the plans themselves is thinner and comes mostly from the United States, where many districts require schools to write improvement plans. One study asked whether the quality of school plans is related to school performance (Fernandez, 2011). Another rated the plans submitted in a Los Angeles improvement initiative and asked whether plan quality was related to implementation (Strunk, Marsh, Bush-Mecenas, & Duque, 2016). A third examined how principals of low-performing schools wrote plans that were “good enough” to satisfy a mandate (Meyers & VanGronigen, 2019). We had access only to summaries of these studies, so we do not report their findings here. The questions they ask are the right ones for the Philippines: does a better plan lead to a better school, and when does planning become a ritual?

The Guidebook’s authors anticipated the second question. They told schools “not to rush to the solutions. As they say, the planning is just as important as the plan.”

### How the 2015 design compares with the evidence

**The SIP’s design against the evidence**

Our judgment: the design is sound. Its weak points are the time it allows and the support it assumes, not its logic.

| SIP design feature | What the evidence says | Our assessment |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Start from school and community data; compare with division targets | Setting directions is a core leadership practice (Leithwood et al., 2020). DepEd’s assessment policy says plans “should always be based on insights gained from studying data” (DO 29, s. 2017) | Consistent |
| Listen to learners and stakeholders; a planning team that includes a learner and a parent | Leaders work partly through family and community conditions (Leithwood et al., 2020); the PPSSH has a strand on learner voice (1.6) | Consistent |
| Narrow area of focus and root cause analysis before solutions | Leaders improve learning by changing specific classroom and school conditions (Leithwood et al., 2020) | Consistent |
| Draw teaching-and-learning project teams from Learning Action Cells | Supportive professional environments are associated with more teacher improvement (Kraft & Papay, 2014) | Consistent |
| Test solutions small before rolling out; monitor twice a year | No direct evidence reviewed here; it fits the continuous-improvement approach the order adopted | Plausible (our judgment) |
| A three-year cycle, judged partly by test results | SBM reforms took about five years to change schools and about eight to change test scores in the United States (Bruns et al., 2011) | Tension: three years is short for the outcomes the plan is asked to move |
| Community participation as the engine of improvement | Rigorous SBM evidence is thin, and capacity-building is a stated precondition (Bruns et al., 2011) | Depends on capacity and support |

Source: DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015 and the studies cited in each row

### What this means for you

- **School heads:** The research supports the hard parts of the process: data, learner voice, a narrow focus, and root causes. These are also the steps most often skipped. If your plan names a problem you can see in your classrooms and a cause your teachers recognise, it is doing what the evidence asks.
- **Aspiring school heads:** The four domains of leadership practice line up closely with the PPSSH. Use them to judge your school’s plan: does it set a direction, develop people, reorganize time and work, and improve instruction?

## What has been added to the SIP since 2015

DepEd Order No. 44 describes a plan built from the bottom up. Since 2015, a long line of national issuances has told schools to write particular things into it, or has tied other decisions to it.

We found 87 documents that mention the SIP: 66 DepEd Orders and 17 DepEd Memoranda from the collections described under [How this review was done](https://nash.com.ph/sip-policy-review#method), plus one law, one joint circular, and two regional memoranda from targeted searches. Of these, 35 are in force and either require something to be written into the SIP or AIP, or tie money, staff, or eligibility to the plan. Several issuances repeat the same requirement; counting each requirement once, they make 22 distinct requirements, 6 of them first issued in 2025.

### SIP requirements in force, by the year first issued

Each of the 22 requirements is counted once. Of these, 6 were first issued in 2025, more than in any other year.

Highlighted in the chart: 2025. In gray: Other years.

| Year | First issued | Running total |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 2015 | 4 | 4 |
| 2016 | 1 | 5 |
| 2017 | 3 | 8 |
| 2018 | 0 | 8 |
| 2019 | 2 | 10 |
| 2020 | 0 | 10 |
| 2021 | 2 | 12 |
| 2022 | 1 | 13 |
| 2023 | 0 | 13 |
| 2024 | 2 | 15 |
| 2025 | 6 | 21 |
| 2026 | 1 | 22 |

Source: NASH Reviewer inventory of 87 documents that mention the SIP (DepEd Orders 2015–2026, DepEd Memoranda 2020–2026, RA 11650, Joint Circular No. 1, s. 2025, and two regional memoranda), as of 29 October 2026

**The 22 requirements in force**

Each requirement counted once, with the issuances in force that state it.

| Requirement | First issued | Issuances in force |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Children-at-risk capacity building in the SIP and AIP | 2015 | DO 18, s. 2015 |
| Disaster risk reduction in the SIP | 2015 | DO 21, s. 2015; DO 37, s. 2015; DO 33, s. 2021 |
| Learning Action Cells linked to the SIP and AIP | 2015 | DO 12, s. 2015; DO 35, s. 2016 |
| The SIP as an application document for senior high school | 2015 | DO 51, s. 2015 |
| WASH in Schools in the SIP and AIP | 2016 | DO 10, s. 2016; DM 68, s. 2021 |
| Gender and development programs in the SIP and AIP | 2017 | DO 32, s. 2017 |
| Madrasah and ALIVE programs in the SIP and AIP | 2017 | DO 41, s. 2017 |
| Teacher induction in the SIP and AIP | 2017 | DO 43, s. 2017 |
| Oral and dental health in the SIP and AIP | 2019 | DO 33, s. 2019; DO 41, s. 2020 |
| School MOOE tied to SIP and AIP activities | 2019 | DO 8, s. 2019; DO 29, s. 2019 |
| Learners with disabilities in the SIP | 2021 | DO 44, s. 2021; RA 11650; DM 43, s. 2025 |
| The SIP as an eligibility document for inclusive learning resource centers | 2021 | DO 45, s. 2021; DO 32, s. 2025 |
| A monitoring and evaluation plan for the SIP | 2022 | DO 29, s. 2022 |
| Learning-continuity resources in the SIP | 2024 | DO 22, s. 2024 |
| Teacher designations and assignments tied to SIP programs | 2024 | DO 5, s. 2024; DM 53, s. 2024; DO 26, s. 2025 |
| ARAL in the SIP and AIP | 2025 | DO 18, s. 2025; DM 58, s. 2025 |
| A language (medium of instruction) strategy in the SIP | 2025 | DO 20, s. 2025; DO 35, s. 2025 |
| Literacy program support funds tied to the SIP and AIP | 2025 | DM 111, s. 2025 |
| SEF items must be in the approved SIP and division plan | 2025 | Joint Circular No. 1, s. 2025 |
| School sports clubs in the SIP and AIP | 2025 | DO 22, s. 2025 |
| Teachers’ development plans aligned with the SIP | 2025 | DM 89, s. 2025 |
| SIIF tied to SIP and AIP literacy and numeracy activities | 2026 | DM 48, s. 2026 |

Source: NASH Reviewer inventory of 87 documents that mention the SIP (DepEd Orders 2015–2026, DepEd Memoranda 2020–2026, RA 11650, Joint Circular No. 1, s. 2025, and two regional memoranda), as of 29 October 2026

Other issuances ask schools to align activities with the SIP, or use SIP inclusion as a monitoring indicator, for example Brigada Eskwela (DM 27, s. 2026) and preventive drug education (DO 30, s. 2018). They are not counted above.

Each requirement makes sense on its own: programs that live in the SIP get planned, budgeted, and monitored. But no issuance brings them together. A school head who wants to know everything the SIP must contain has to find dozens of orders and memoranda issued over eleven years.

### What the list does to the plan

Our judgment, based on the documents above: the accumulation pulls the SIP away from its own design. The Guidebook asks schools to choose a few priorities and focus deeply on each. A plan that must also show disaster preparedness, WASH, gender, inclusion, dental health, ARAL, language strategy, sports, and more risks becoming a list of compliance entries, whatever the school’s own priorities are.

The School Innovation and Improvement Fund shows how national priorities enter the plan. The first memorandum is dated 29 August 2025. Allocations were set by enrollment, not by plan content. It asked each recipient school’s planning team, with its governance council, to “revisit and review the SIP and AIP” in the first week of September 2025, and to ensure “that literacy and numeracy are identified as PIAs”; schools then had September to December to implement (DM 73, s. 2025). The 2026 memorandum asks schools to “revisit their current AIP and, when necessary, identify PIAs to enhance literacy and numeracy” (DM 48, s. 2026).

Literacy and numeracy are the right priorities for most Filipino schools. But here the priority was set nationally, with one week to review the plan: the reverse of the slow, bottom-up process DepEd Order No. 44 describes.

### What has aged in the 2015 Guidebook

**The Guidebook against current policy**

Schools following the Guidebook to the letter will meet terms and systems that no longer exist.

| The Guidebook says | Current policy |
| --- | --- |
| “School Governing Council” | School Governance Council (DO 26, s. 2022) |
| Report the “School-Based Management Assessment Level” | SBM “degree of manifestation” from a self-assessment, with no supporting documents required (DO 7, s. 2024; DO 83, s. 2012 repealed) |
| Write SIP work into the RPMS and IPCRF | Teachers are under the multi-year PMES (DM 89, s. 2025); for school heads, see “Feedback and accountability” below |
| Gather data from the EBEIS | The Learner Information System and the Basic Education Information System (DM 28, s. 2026) |
| Report National Achievement Test mean percentage scores | National targets are set as the share of learners reaching at least “proficient”: the Q-BEDP aims for 77.2 percent of Grade 3 learners in reading and 66 percent in mathematics by 2028 (EDCOM II, 2026a, p. 445) |
| Do child mapping during early registration under DO 1, s. 2015 | DO 1, s. 2015 applied only to SY 2015–2016; the 2018 enrollment policy that reused the SIP child-mapping tool (DO 3, s. 2018) was repealed by DO 17, s. 2025, which does not mention the SIP |
| A January–May planning calendar, with submission by the second week of May | A three-term school year (DO 9, s. 2026); see “Time” below |

Source: SIP Guidebook (2015) and the issuances named in each row

### What this means for you

- **School heads:** Keep your own checklist of the programs your division expects to see in your SIP and AIP, with the issuance for each. Then decide which are genuine priorities for your learners and which are entries to record, and give your depth and your discretionary money to the first group.
- **Aspiring school heads:** When you review a school’s SIP, count how many of its priority improvement areas came from the school’s own data and how many came from national programs. The ratio tells you a lot about how the plan was made.

## Does the system let schools plan for learning?

A good SIP process assumes a school head to lead it, money the school can direct, time, usable data, skilled support, and feedback. For each, we set out what policy provides, what is known about implementation, and the gap.

### A school head

- **Policy.** RA 9155 provides for a school head in every public school or cluster of schools, and DepEd Order No. 44 makes the school head the leader of the planning team. A 2025 joint circular of the budget department and DepEd sets a standard of one School Principal item per school (DBM–DepEd JC 01, s. 2025, §9.1), with no timetable.
- **Coverage.** At a Senate hearing on 16 October 2026, DepEd reported that about 22,000 of 45,928 public schools had principals, and about 23,000, about half, had no principal item. EDCOM II’s release calls this “around 45%”, but its counts come to about half. In January 2026 the share was 55 percent (26,453 of 48,113 schools). EDCOM II counts 13,313 schools with neither a principal nor a head teacher (EDCOM II, 2026c). EDCOM II’s final report, using earlier data, put the share at 48 percent (EDCOM II, 2026a, p. 390).
- **New items.** The budget department approved 6,000 new School Principal I positions for 2026; by October about 2,000 had been filled, and 914 teachers-in-charge had been reclassified into principal items. DepEd asked for ₱10.5 billion to create more than 14,000 principal items in 2027, but the proposed 2027 budget funds none; DepEd said it would rely on reclassifications under the expanded career progression system instead (EDCOM II, 2026c). EDCOM II’s roadmap had recommended 6,000, 8,000, and 8,124 new items in 2026, 2027, and 2028 (EDCOM II, 2026a, p. 495).
- **Competencies.** For the share of principals meeting SBM competencies, the same roadmap records a baseline of 0 percent, “pending the establishment of DepEd’s Principals Academy” (EDCOM II, 2026a, p. 495).
- **The 2000s lesson.** When the SIP was first introduced, principals and head teachers were trained to lead it (Khattri et al., 2010). The project’s completion report also warned that community engagement demanded “considerable time” from principals and teachers, which “several were beginning to find burdensome.”
- **Gap.** In about half of all schools, the person responsible for the SIP holds no principal position or pay, and often has had no preparation for the role. Policy assumes a principal; practice often provides a teacher-in-charge. See the [principal shortage in numbers](https://nash.com.ph/principal-shortage).

### Public schools without a principal item, October 2026

Each count uses its own date and school total, so they are not a smooth trend.

**Share of public schools without a principal item, by count**

| Count | No principal item |
| --- | --- |
| SY 2024–2025 (EDCOM II) | 48% |
| January 2026 (DepEd, 48,113 schools) | 55% |
| October 2026 (DepEd, 45,928 schools) | About 50% |

Source: EDCOM II news release, “EDCOM pushes for 2027 budget to close the gap in school principals nationwide” (18 October 2026), reporting DepEd's figures at the 16 October 2026 Senate hearing; EDCOM II Final Report, Turning Point (2026), p. 73, DepEd data for SY 2024–2025

### Money that follows the plan

- **School MOOE.** DepEd Order No. 8, s. 2019 lists the uses of school MOOE “among others, subject to availability of funds and prioritization of mandatory expense items.” The first is “to fund activities as identified in the approved School Improvement Plan (SIP) for implementation in the current year and as specifically determined in the Annual Implementation Plan (AIP).” Others include ceremonies, supplies, minor repairs, and small equipment.
- **The SIIF.** Its main category is “SIP-AIP Activities”: activities “identified in the approved SIP and specifically determined in the AIP,” provided they focus on literacy and numeracy. It may also fund action research projects and, from any remaining balance, related operating expenses (DM 48, s. 2026, Encl. V.3).
- **The local Special Education Fund.** The Local School Board prepares school budgets “based on the DepEd-approved SIP and DEDP,” and all SEF expenditure items must be among those allowed and “contained in the approved SIP and DEDP” (Joint Circular No. 1, s. 2025, §6.3, §6.3.1). The school head gives an annual progress report on the SIP (§6.4.2).

**Where SIP money comes from**

| Source | Rule linking it to the SIP | Who decides | Room to shape it |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| School MOOE | First listed use, after mandatory expenses: SIP and AIP activities (calendar-year AIP) | School head, within the AIP; routed through the division office for most schools | Low in practice: 30–70% went to utility bills (2023 consultations) |
| School Innovation and Improvement Fund | Mainly approved SIP and AIP literacy and numeracy activities; also action research | School, with division review | Medium: a national focus, the school chooses the interventions |
| Literacy program support funds (2025) | Only literacy activities in the approved SIP for SY 2025–2026 | School | Medium |
| Special Education Fund (LGU) | Items must be in the approved SIP and division plan | Local School Board | Varies: first-class municipalities have 68 times the SEF income of sixth-class ones |
| PTA, Brigada Eskwela, and partners | Brigada activities aligned with the SIP and AIP | PTA; school | Varies |

Source: DO 8, s. 2019; DM 48, s. 2026; DM 111, s. 2025; Joint Circular No. 1, s. 2025; DM 27, s. 2026; EDCOM II (2024a), pp. xxxv, 287, 297

**The School Innovation and Improvement Fund per school, 2026**

By school size and municipal income class. Of the 43,249 schools listed, 26,577 receive ₱50,000 and none receives more than ₱85,700.

| School size (enrollment) | 1st–2nd class | 3rd–5th class |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Small (500 and below) | ₱50,000 | ₱55,000 |
| Medium (501–1,000) | ₱55,000 | ₱65,000 |
| Large (1,001–3,300) | ₱65,000 | ₱74,500 |
| Very large (3,301–8,500) | ₱74,500 | ₱85,700 |
| Extremely large (8,501–13,600) | ₱85,700 | ₱90,000 |
| Mega (13,601 and above) | ₱90,000 | ₱110,000 |

Source: DepEd Memorandum No. 48, s. 2026, Table 1 and Annex A; RA 12314

- **Utility bills.** In EDCOM II’s 2023 consultations, school heads from Iloilo and Davao reported that “30% to 70% of their school MOOE budget is spent to cover utility bills” (EDCOM II, 2024a, pp. xxxv, 297).
- **Little left over.** A 2025 study for EDCOM II reports that one consultation participant had “only P20,000 … left to fund the projects under their SIP” after operating expenses, and concludes that MOOE is, “by design, not a source of funding for innovation” (Laguda et al., 2025, p. 39).
- **Per-learner MOOE.** Between 2018 and 2022, per-learner MOOE was ₱1,041 for elementary, ₱1,434 for junior high, and ₱1,436 for senior high learners (EDCOM II, 2026a, p. 363).
- **The new formula.** A “normative” formula replaced the 2013 formula in part for FY 2025 and in full for the FY 2026 budget. In EDCOM II’s example, a medium-sized elementary school’s MOOE rises from ₱467,000 in FY 2024 to ₱904,000 in FY 2026, an increase of 94 percent (EDCOM II, 2026a, p. 363); EDCOM II had estimated that the full formula would raise the overall school MOOE budget by about 85 percent (EDCOM II, 2024b). We found no public DepEd order or numbered memorandum that sets out the new formula, and the rule linking MOOE to the SIP is still DO 8, s. 2019.
- **Few schools control their own funds.** Only 5.9 percent of public schools are Implementing Units with direct access to their budgets. The other 94.1 percent must process all MOOE through their division offices, which EDCOM II says turns “what should be discretionary school-level spending into a centralized administrative bottleneck” (EDCOM II, 2026b).
- **Two clocks.** DO 8, s. 2019 requires the AIP to “follow the calendar year format,” while the school year runs from June to April, and the SIIF must be used within the fiscal year. In 2025, SIIF schools reviewed their plans in September and implemented by December.
- **Gap.** School money is tied to the plan, but the money a school could actually shape was small, largely committed to fixed costs, and on a fiscal calendar different from the school year. The FY 2026 MOOE increase may change this; its effect on what schools can fund from their plans is not yet documented. Our judgment: the funding picture explains much of the compliance that [observers describe](https://nash.com.ph/sip-policy-review#in-practice). When a plan cannot fund its own priorities, writing it well has little payoff.

### Time

- **Policy.** DepEd has moved to protect teachers’ time: it ordered the removal of administrative tasks from teachers (DO 2, s. 2024), set limits on their workload (DO 5, s. 2024), and narrowed the forms teachers must fill in, a cut from 174 to 75 by EDCOM II’s count (EDCOM II, 2026a, p. 283; DO 6, s. 2025). The SIP, the AIP, and the School Report Card were on the old list of teacher forms and are not on the new one. Teachers who serve on the planning team or governance council may still be asked for related reports, but “as may be practicable, other members aside from teachers shall assume primary responsibility for these forms and reports,” and school heads must ensure teachers’ workload is not “adversely affected” (DO 6, s. 2025, para. 5).
- **The calendar.** DepEd Order No. 44’s timetable was written for a June-to-March school year: preparation and assessment from January to March, planning in April and May, submission to the division by the second week of May, and implementation from June. The three-term calendar (DO 9, s. 2026) runs SY 2026–2027 from 8 June 2026 to 8 April 2027, followed by teachers’ 30-day end-of-year break from 9 April to 9 May 2027. The SIP’s planning phase now falls largely inside that break, and the submission date in the week after it, when the end-of-year intervention program and teacher training begin. We found no SIP or School Report Card activity in the new calendar.
- **Gap.** Policy has rightly taken planning paperwork off teachers, but it has not said who does the work instead, other than “other members” of the planning team where practicable, or when. The SIP’s calendar no longer fits the school year.

**The SIP timetable on the three-term calendar, SY 2026–2027**

| Month | SIP activity (DepEd Order No. 44) | Three-term calendar (DO 9, s. 2026) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| June 2026 | Act (implementation) | Term 1 opens 8 June; beginning-of-year assessments |
| July–September | Act | Term 1 to 15 September; end-of-term teacher training |
| October | Mid-year School Report Card assembly | Term 2 (16 September to 18 December) |
| November–December | Act | Term 2; year-end break from 19 December |
| January 2027 | Preparatory activities and data gathering | Term 3 (4 January to 8 April) |
| February–March | Assess; year-end School Report Card assembly | Term 3; end-of-year assessment window; NAT Grade 6 |
| April | Plan: solutions, project designs, the SIP and AIP | Term 3 ends 8 April; teachers’ 30-day break from 9 April |
| May | Plan; documents to the division by the second week of May | Break ends 9 May; intervention program and teacher training from 10 May |

Source: DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015 and SIP Guidebook flowchart; DepEd Order No. 9, s. 2026

### Usable data

- **Policy.** The Guidebook’s School-Community Data Template (Annex 1A) gathers school and community data in one place. DepEd’s assessment policy says school plans “should always be based on insights gained from studying data” (DO 29, s. 2017). The three-term calendar sets beginning- and end-of-year testing windows for reading and numeracy assessments (DO 9, s. 2026). The 2025 SIIF memorandum told schools to review their priorities “based on their School Improvement Plan and Annual Implementation Plan and existing learner assessment data” (DM 73, s. 2025). School data collected through the Basic Education Information System are to be published on DepEd’s Paaralang Bukas dashboard (DM 28, s. 2026).
- **Implementation.** A 2017 case study reports that SIP project teams often lacked “the time, resources, or capacity to undertake all steps, resulting in a continuation of previous practices of simply copying and submitting information found on templates rather than deeply engaging with data analysis” (Read & Atinc, 2017, p. 17). EDCOM II recommends “incorporating diagnostic results into school improvement planning” so that assessments shift “from compliance-oriented activities toward meaningful instruments” (EDCOM II, 2026a, p. 147).
- **Gap.** Schools have more learner data than in 2015, and the end-of-year assessment window falls during the SIP’s assessment phase. But no standing rule ties those results to the SIP cycle; the 2025 SIIF memorandum did so once. The capacity to analyse the data is uneven.

### Support and quality assurance

- **Policy.** DepEd Order No. 44 makes district supervisors, with trained principals and teachers, “coaches to guide the schools in crafting and implementing the SIPs.” The revised SBM system makes the division responsible for technical assistance through a field technical assistance team (DO 7, s. 2024). The 2018 appraisal procedure has division committees score each SIP with a quality-assurance tool; its guidance says the committee’s “major consideration is to look on the important parts rather than focus on the technical aspects, e.g. grammar, coherence” (DepEd–NCR, 2019).
- **Implementation.** EDCOM II proposes a “school head tool kit and resource center … to streamline administrative processes and allow school leaders to focus more on teaching and leading” (EDCOM II, 2025, p. 264). The World Bank review lists capacity-building as a condition for SBM to work (Bruns et al., 2011, p. 129). We found no published assessment of how much SIP coaching divisions actually provide.
- **Gap.** Support is assigned on paper, but no one reports on its reach or quality.

### Feedback and accountability

- **Policy.** DepEd Order No. 44 requires a summative SIP evaluation by the division after every cycle, and quarterly monitoring and an annual evaluation of the process by the Central Office. It says the School Report Card is “not for planning and accountability,” and it allows SIP work to count: the participation of the school head, teachers, and staff in the SIP “may be included in the Results-Based Performance Management System,” including the school head’s office performance form (DO 44, s. 2015, para. 6). Teachers’ development plans must align with the SIP (DM 89, s. 2025).
- **School heads’ performance management.** It is in transition. In March 2024 DepEd issued interim guidelines for a revised Office Performance Commitment and Review Form, to be used by “heads of schools in the elementary and secondary levels” and meant to reflect “their respective education development plans in the Region, Divisions, and schools” (DM-OUHROD-2024-0586). In July 2024 DepEd suspended its results-based performance system for all school-based personnel, “school heads, teachers, and nonteaching personnel” (DM-OSEC-2024-01), and in February 2025 lifted the suspension for teachers (DM 17, s. 2025). We did not find a national memorandum expressly lifting it for school heads, although division memoranda show the office form in use for SY 2025–2026. By November 2025 DepEd had draft tools for a separate performance system for school heads based on the PPSSH, and called a drafting workshop (DM-OUHROD-2025-3315).
- **Implementation.** We found no published Central Office evaluation of the enhanced SIP process since 2016, no published division summative evaluations, and no study answering the question BEDP 2030 itself posed: “Do School Improvement Plans have any impact on learning outcomes?” A 2017 case study reports that “the different planning (E-SIP), advocacy (SRC), and accountability (RPMS) tools also remain purposely disconnected” (Read & Atinc, 2017, p. 17).
- **Gap.** No one learns systematically from the SIPs that tens of thousands of public schools write. DepEd Order No. 44 allows, but does not require, SIP work in the school head’s performance commitments, and the school head’s own performance system is still being designed.

### What this means for you

- **School heads and teachers-in-charge:** You can’t change the MOOE formula or the calendar. But you can protect the planning steps that matter most: learner voice, root cause, and small tests. Use the end-of-year assessment results that arrive in March as the main evidence for your next AIP, ask your division what coaching and appraisal it offers, and put your SIP work into your office performance commitments, as DepEd Order No. 44 allows.
- **Aspiring school heads:** Learn to read a school budget alongside its plan. A SIP whose priorities are funded only by “other sources” is a warning sign, and so is an AIP that is mostly utilities, repairs, and events.

## What the evidence says about SIPs in practice

Schools do write SIPs. In a 2014 national survey, “almost all schools had current school improvement plans in place,” and only 5 percent of elementary and 10 percent of high schools lacked an up-to-date annual implementation plan (World Bank, 2016b, p. 5). The question is what those plans do.

- **Parents hardly know the plans exist.** In the same survey, “fewer than half of all parents interviewed were aware that their school had an improvement plan.” Most of those who knew appear to have been invited to help prepare it; “any awareness beyond this group of parents was rare” (World Bank, 2016a, p. 76).
- **Some principals named planning as a weakness.** The main weaknesses principals identified concerned school autonomy, and about 20 percent of elementary and high school principals “also cited weaknesses in school improvement planning” (World Bank, 2016a, p. 72).
- **Plans focused on facilities.** DepEd’s BEDP 2030 states that community participation “increased the community’s ownership of the plan.” However, “most School Improvement Plans (SIP) unevenly focused on improving school facilities rather than directly addressing issues on teaching and learning” (DepEd, 2022a).
- **Templates were copied.** A 2017 case study reports schools “simply copying and submitting information found on templates rather than deeply engaging with data analysis” (Read & Atinc, 2017, p. 17).
- **Plans are described as written for compliance.** This is one strand of evidence, restated several times. Participants in EDCOM II’s 2023 consultations said that, because school budgets for improvement are limited, “most schools craft school improvement plans out of lip service rather than undertake a participatory bottom-up approach” (EDCOM II, 2024a, p. 303). A 2025 study for EDCOM II restates this, “most schools craft their SIPs out of compliance,” citing EDCOM’s 2023 synthesis, and adds that SIPs and report cards are “sometimes perceived as administrative burdens rather than effective means of engaging stakeholders” (Laguda et al., 2025, pp. 39–40). EDCOM II’s second and final reports summarise that study’s conclusion that school-based management has become “compliance-oriented” (EDCOM II, 2025, p. 371; 2026a, p. 369).
- **DepEd has said something similar about SBM.** When it revised the SBM system in 2024, DepEd acknowledged that practitioners found it “laden with voluminous and repetitive documentary requirements,” and it dropped the requirement to attach supporting documents (DO 7, s. 2024).

How strong is this evidence? Weaker than the number of citations suggests. The only national survey dates from 2014, before the current process began. The later evidence is a 2017 case study, a statement in a 2022 plan, and EDCOM II’s 2023 consultations, which later reports restate. None measured SIP quality across a representative sample of schools, and none tested whether better plans go with better learning. We found no published national evaluation of SIP implementation since 2016.

The direction of the evidence is consistent; its depth is not. That is itself a finding. DepEd requires an annual evaluation of the SIP process (DO 44, s. 2015), and BEDP 2030 lists the impact of SIPs as an open research question, yet the answer is not public.

## Gaps between policy and practice

Each gap below is backed by a source cited in the sections above.

**Nine gaps**

| Gap | What policy says | What the evidence shows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| G1. A bottom-up plan | The SIP is the school’s own plan, focused on a few priorities (DO 44, s. 2015) | 22 distinct requirements in force (35 issuances) add content or conditions, with no consolidated list; a national priority was introduced with a one-week review window |
| G2. A revised SIP policy | BEDP 2030 commits to a “revised SIP policy” | None issued as of October 2026; the Q-BEDP does not mention the SIP by name |
| G3. A school head | Every school has a school head who leads the SIP (RA 9155; DO 44) | About half of schools had no principal item in October 2026 (55% in January); no new principal items in the proposed 2027 budget; principals meeting SBM competencies recorded at 0% |
| G4. Money | SIIF and SEF go to items in the approved plan; SIP activities are the first listed use of MOOE | Only 5.9% of schools control their own funds; money a school can shape was small and largely committed to utilities; SBM grants stopped after 2015; the SIIF is fiscal-year-bound and mostly ₱50,000 per school; the effect of the 2026 MOOE increase is not yet known |
| G5. The calendar | Planning on a January–May timetable, submission by mid-May | Teachers are on break from 9 April to 9 May and the three-term calendar has no SIP window; the AIP runs on a calendar year, the school year from June to April |
| G6. Who does the work | Teachers are relieved of planning paperwork; other planning-team members take primary responsibility “as may be practicable” | No guidance says who does the work or when |
| G7. Data and learner voice | Plans are based on data and learner voice | Template-copying and a facilities bias reported; no standing link between assessment results and the SIP cycle |
| G8. Evaluation and quality | Divisions coach and evaluate; the Central Office evaluates the process every year | No published evaluation since 2016; appraisal rests on an unnumbered 2018 memorandum and a general Q-BEDP clause, not on the SIP order |
| G9. Performance management | SIP work may count in performance management (DO 44, para. 6) | Teachers’ development plans must align with the SIP; the school heads’ system is in transition; the tools are described as “purposely disconnected” |

Source: The sources cited in the sections above

**Promises and delivery, October 2026**

| Commitment | Source | Status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Revised SBM policy | BEDP 2030 | Done (DO 7, s. 2024) |
| Revised SIP policy | BEDP 2030 | Not found |
| Annual evaluation of the SIP process | DO 44, s. 2015 | Not found (none published) |
| Division summative evaluation after each cycle | DO 44, s. 2015 | Not found (none published) |
| An answer to “Do SIPs have any impact on learning outcomes?” | BEDP 2030 research agenda | Not found |
| One principal item per school | DBM–DepEd JC 01, s. 2025 | Partly funded: 6,000 items approved for 2026 (about 2,000 filled by October); none in the proposed 2027 budget |
| A flexible grant tied to the SIP | DM 73, s. 2025; DM 48, s. 2026 | Allocated for FY 2025 and FY 2026 |
| “Schools have functional SGCs, funded SIPs, and practice SBM” | EDCOM II roadmap, 2035 target | Target |

Source: DepEd Order No. 24, s. 2022; DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015; EDCOM II (2026a), pp. 495–496; EDCOM II (2026c)

## Recommendations

Every recommendation answers a gap above. None proposes something already in law or policy; where the rule exists, the recommendation is about carrying it out. These are our recommendations.

### For the DepEd Central Office

- **R1. Issue the revised SIP policy that BEDP 2030 promised (G1, G2, G5, G6, G8).** DepEd Order No. 44 is a DepEd issuance, so DepEd can revise it without new law.

- Consolidate: add one maintained annex listing everything other issuances require in the SIP or AIP, marked mandatory or optional, and have any new issuance amend that annex rather than add a separate requirement. DepEd already applies this principle elsewhere: its 2026 El Niño guidelines tell offices and schools to “use existing plans, assessment tools, referral pathways, and reporting systems wherever practicable; do not create parallel plans or reports when existing mechanisms can serve the purpose” (DM 64, s. 2026).
- Separate compliance from priorities: let schools record mandated programs in a short standard section, and reserve the priority improvement areas for the few problems the school’s own data and learners point to.
- Fit the calendar: align the SIP and AIP timetable with the three-term school year (DO 9, s. 2026), and reconcile the school year with the calendar-year AIP and fiscal-year grants.
- Update the references: the School Governance Council, the DO 7, s. 2024 self-assessment, LIS and BEIS, current assessments, and current performance management.
- Put approval and quality assurance in the order itself, which now rest on an unnumbered 2018 memorandum and a general clause in the Q-BEDP: who appraises, against what criteria, and within what time.
- Say who does the work: DO 6, s. 2025 moved planning paperwork off teachers where practicable; the order should say which personnel carry it.
- Offer a lighter version for small schools and schools led by teachers-in-charge.

- **R2. Publish what DepEd Order No. 44 already requires, and answer BEDP’s question (G8).** Release the annual evaluations of the SIP process and the division summative evaluations, or carry them out if they were never done. Use data DepEd already collects, including the SIIF quarterly reports and year-end implementation assessments (DM 48, s. 2026) and the new MOOE allocations, to study what schools plan, what they spend on, and how learning changes, and publish the results. This is the cheapest way to learn whether the plan works.

### For DepEd, the budget department, and Congress

- **R3. Make plan-linked school funding predictable (G4).** The SIIF was a line item in the 2026 budget (₱2,289,250,000). Keep it from year to year so schools can plan around it; consider letting unspent amounts follow the three-year SIP rather than the fiscal year; and let schools set their literacy and numeracy priorities from their own assessment data instead of reviewing plans to a national deadline. The Philippine evidence associates SBM with modest learning gains when plans came with resources (Khattri et al., 2010; Yamauchi, 2014), and a 2025 study for EDCOM II recommends reviving SBM grants (Laguda et al., 2025). We do not estimate costs beyond the existing appropriation.
- **R4. Fund and prepare school head positions with the SIP in mind (G3).** One principal item per school is already the standard (DBM–DepEd JC 01, s. 2025), and 6,000 items were funded for 2026, but the proposed 2027 budget funds no new items. Keep funding them until every school has one, and prepare the people: training under NEAP, including the planned Principals Academy, should cover SIP leadership, and teachers-in-charge who lead SIPs now should not have to wait for an item to get it.

### For Schools Division Offices

- **R5. Coach for quality, not format (G7, G8).** When appraising SIPs, look at whether priorities come from the school’s data and learners, whether the root causes are plausible, and whether the AIP funds the priorities; grammar and template layout matter less, as the 2018 appraisal guidance already says. Give schools a current checklist of mandated SIP content until the national revision, and adjust local SIP timetables to the three-term calendar.

### For school heads and teachers-in-charge, this school year

- **R6. Plan for depth inside the current rules.** These are within your authority now.

- Keep two lists: record mandated programs in one short section, choose no more than a few genuine priority improvement areas from your own data, and give them most of your discretionary money.
- Use the evidence you already have: base next year’s AIP on the end-of-year reading and numeracy results that arrive in March, and on what learners and parents tell you.
- Plan with your teachers’ learning time: draw project teams for teaching problems from your Learning Action Cells, as the Guidebook suggests, and keep the paperwork with other planning-team members where practicable, as DO 6, s. 2025 directs.
- Test before you scale: try a solution in one section or grade, compare the data before and after, then decide.
- Tell parents: use the School Report Card to show parents what the plan is and how it is going, in the language they use. In 2014, fewer than half of parents knew their school had a plan.
- Spend SIIF on your SIP priority: if your school receives the fund, put it on the literacy or numeracy problem your plan identified, not on what is easiest to liquidate.

### For aspiring school heads

- **R7. Prepare for the plan, not just the test.** The PPSSH strands on school planning (1.2), learner voice (1.6), and monitoring and evaluation (1.7) describe what the SIP asks of a school head. Build four skills: reading and explaining school data; leading a root cause analysis with teachers; facilitating a planning team that includes learners, parents, and the barangay; and reading a school budget (MOOE, SEF, SIIF) against its plan. Volunteer for your school’s planning team now: most school heads learn the SIP by doing it.

R6 and R7 are within your authority today; R1 to R5 are for DepEd, the budget department, and Congress, so raise them with your division, your Local School Board, and your professional networks. For the school head’s other duties, read [the roles of a school head](https://nash.com.ph/school-head-roles), and for the path to a principal item, the [guide for aspiring school heads](https://nash.com.ph/aspiring-school-heads).

## Limitations and what we don’t know

What this review can and cannot say.

- **No fieldwork.** We did not interview school heads or rate actual SIPs. Our account of practice relies on others’ surveys, consultations, and case studies, which overlap, and the one national survey predates the current process.
- **No national data on SIP quality.** No public dataset records what SIPs contain, how good they are, or whether they are carried out. We therefore make no claim about the effect of SIPs on learning.
- **Search limits.** The inventory covers the DepEd Orders (2015 onward) and Memoranda (2020 onward) available to us as searchable text, plus 39 issuances missing from those collections, found as original PDFs or on DepEd’s website; it was a phrase search. Twenty-three of those 39 were scans or unavailable as text, which we checked by title and, where relevant, by reading the pages. Orders issued before 2015 that may still apply (such as the child protection policy, DO 40, s. 2012), memoranda before 2020, and regional and division issuances were outside the search, apart from the examples named. The counts describe the documents we could search; they are not a census.
- **Regional variation.** One region defines its 2023–2028 SIPs as six-year plans (DepEd Region VIII, 2023), so practice varies.
- **Foreign research.** Most research on the quality of school plans comes from the United States, and we could read only summaries of the key studies. We used them to frame questions, not to predict Philippine results.
- **Transitional policy.** Principal staffing, performance management for school heads, the MOOE formula, and the national development plan were all changing at the time of writing. We describe them as of 29 October 2026.

## Common questions

Short answers drawn from the issuances. Your division office has the final word on your case.

### Is DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015 still in force?

Yes. As of 29 October 2026, no order has repealed or amended it. It “shall remain in effect, unless sooner repealed, amended, or rescinded.” Later orders, including the 2024 SBM order and the 2022 orders on School Governance Councils and on monitoring and evaluation, still cite it, and its SIP Guidebook remains the official reference.

### How long is a SIP cycle?

Three school years under DepEd Order No. 44, with a new Annual Implementation Plan each year. SIPs in the 2000s were five-year plans, and one region defines its 2023–2028 SIPs as six-year plans, so check your region’s and division’s memoranda.

### Can MOOE pay for something that is not in the SIP?

Yes, within limits. DepEd Order No. 8, s. 2019 lists the uses of school MOOE “among others, subject to availability of funds and prioritization of mandatory expense items.” The first listed use is the activities in the approved SIP and AIP; others include graduation and recognition rites, classroom supplies, minor repairs, and small equipment. Make sure your AIP reflects what you actually plan to spend on.

### Does my school need a proposal for the School Innovation and Improvement Fund?

No funding proposal is needed. For 2026, recipient schools “are not required to submit funding proposals.” Planned activities must be in the approved SIP and AIP and focus on literacy and numeracy; action research projects are also allowed. Schools report use every quarter through InsightED (DepEd Memorandum No. 48, s. 2026).

### Who leads the SIP in a school without a principal?

The school head leads the School-Community Planning Team. In a school without a principal item, that is in practice the teacher-in-charge or officer-in-charge. Policy does not provide a separate process for them.

### Is the SIP the same as School-Based Management?

No. School-Based Management is the system of shared decision-making that DepEd assesses through a yearly self-assessment (DepEd Order No. 7, s. 2024). The SIP is the plan a school writes within that system. SBM self-assessment results are meant to feed the SIP and AIP.

### Is the School Report Card an accountability tool?

Not officially. DepEd Order No. 44 says the School Report Card “is not for planning and accountability; it is a communication and advocacy tool.” It tells parents and the community how the school is doing and where it needs their help.

### Do teachers still have to prepare SIP documents?

The SIP, AIP, and School Report Card are no longer among teachers’ required forms (DepEd Order No. 6, s. 2025). Teachers who sit on the planning team or governance council may be asked for related reports, but “as may be practicable,” other members of those groups take primary responsibility for them.

*From reading the policy to leading the plan*

## Practice the decisions a school head makes

Timed practice sets put you in a school head’s place, one situation at a time, and score your choices by PPSSH domain and strand, school planning included.

**What you practice with**

- Timed situational items, two minutes each
- Every item tagged to a PPSSH domain, strand, and indicator
- Results by domain, with the strands to study next
- An explanation for every answer

- **Free**: 34 practice sets
- **30-day pass**: ₱1,000 for 30 days
- **Lifetime**: ₱3,000 once

Practice scores are study aids, not official NASH ratings.

[Start practicing free](https://nash.com.ph/sign-up) or [compare plans](https://nash.com.ph/pricing).

## How to cite this page

Use APA style (7th edition). The date is the day the page was last updated. Where you use a figure or a rule, also cite the law, issuance, or report the page names for it.

Llego, M. A. (2026, October 30). *Is the School Improvement Plan working?* NASH Reviewer. https://nash.com.ph/sip-policy-review

In-text citation: (Llego, 2026).

To cite DepEd orders and memoranda themselves, see [How to Cite DepEd Orders in APA 7 and Write the Abstract](https://nash.com.ph/blog/cite-deped-order-apa-7).

## References

Every fact on this page comes from these sources. Check the official text of an issuance before you act on it; DepEd’s website has the official copies.

### Laws and joint issuances

- Department of Budget and Management & Department of Education. (2025). Modified position classification and compensation scheme and system of career progression of teachers and school heads in the public basic education system (Joint Circular No. 01, s. 2025; 19 February 2025).
- Department of Education, Department of Budget and Management, Department of the Interior and Local Government, & Department of Finance. (2025). Omnibus guidelines on the use of the Special Education Fund (Joint Circular No. 1, s. 2025).
- Republic Act No. 9155. (2001). Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001.
- Republic Act No. 11650. (2022). Instituting a policy of inclusion and services for learners with disabilities in support of inclusive education.
- Republic Act No. 12314. (2026). General Appropriations Act, Fiscal Year 2026 (Vol. I-A, Department of Education).

### DepEd issuances

- Department of Education. (2012). Implementing guidelines on the revised school-based management (SBM) framework, assessment process and tool (APAT) (DepEd Order No. 83, s. 2012). Repealed by DO 7, s. 2024.
- Department of Education. (2015a). Declaring January 24, 2015 as commencement of early registration for SY 2015–2016 (DepEd Order No. 1, s. 2015).
- Department of Education. (2015b). Guidelines on the enhanced school improvement planning (SIP) process and the school report card (SRC) (DepEd Order No. 44, s. 2015), with the School Improvement Plan Guidebook and Annexes 1A–12B.
- Department of Education. (2016a). Implementing guidelines on the direct release and use of maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) allocations of schools (DepEd Order No. 13, s. 2016). Revoked by DO 8, s. 2019.
- Department of Education. (2016b). The Learning Action Cell as a K to 12 Basic Education Program school-based continuing professional development strategy for the improvement of teaching and learning (DepEd Order No. 35, s. 2016).
- Department of Education. (2017). Policy guidelines on system assessment in the K to 12 Basic Education Program (DepEd Order No. 29, s. 2017).
- Department of Education. (2019). Revised implementing guidelines on the direct release, use, monitoring and reporting of maintenance and other operating expenses allocation of schools, including other funds managed by schools (DepEd Order No. 8, s. 2019).
- Department of Education. (2020). National adoption and implementation of the Philippine Professional Standards for School Heads (DepEd Order No. 24, s. 2020).
- Department of Education. (2021). SEA-PLM 2019 national report of the Philippines.
- Department of Education. (2022a). Adoption of the Basic Education Development Plan 2030 (DepEd Order No. 24, s. 2022).
- Department of Education. (2022b). Implementing guidelines on the establishment of School Governance Council (DepEd Order No. 26, s. 2022).
- Department of Education. (2022c). Adoption of the Basic Education Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (DepEd Order No. 29, s. 2022).
- Department of Education. (2024a). Immediate removal of administrative tasks of public school teachers (DepEd Order No. 2, s. 2024).
- Department of Education. (2024b). Rationalization of teachers’ workload in public schools and payment of teaching overload (DepEd Order No. 5, s. 2024).
- Department of Education. (2024c). Policy guidelines on the implementation of the revised school-based management system (DepEd Order No. 7, s. 2024).
- Department of Education. (2024d). Revised guidelines on class and work suspension in schools during disasters and emergencies (DepEd Order No. 22, s. 2024).
- Department of Education. (2024e). Interim guidelines for the office performance planning and assessment for FY 2024 onwards (Memorandum DM-OUHROD-2024-0586, 27 March 2024).
- Department of Education. (2024f). Guidance on the implementation of the DepEd Results-based Performance Management System (RPMS) relative to Executive Order No. 61, s. 2024 (Memorandum DM-OSEC-2024-01, 22 July 2024).
- Department of Education. (2025a). Interim guidelines for the DepEd Performance Management and Evaluation System (PMES) for teachers in the School Year 2024–2025 (DepEd Memorandum No. 17, s. 2025).
- Department of Education. (2025b). Guidelines on the streamlining of school forms and reports accomplished by teachers (DepEd Order No. 6, s. 2025).
- Department of Education. (2025c). Revised basic education enrollment policy (DepEd Order No. 17, s. 2025).
- Department of Education. (2025d). Implementing guidelines of the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning Program (DepEd Order No. 18, s. 2025).
- Department of Education. (2025e). Policy on the medium of instruction for Kindergarten to Grade 3 effective School Year 2025–2026 (DepEd Order No. 20, s. 2025).
- Department of Education. (2025f). Quality Basic Education Development Plan 2025–2035.
- Department of Education. (2025g). Allocation and release of the School Innovation and Improvement Fund to eligible public schools to strengthen decentralization and accelerate literacy interventions of the Department of Education for fiscal year 2025 (DepEd Memorandum No. 73, s. 2025).
- Department of Education. (2025h). Guidelines on the multi-year performance management and evaluation system for teachers from school years 2025–2026 to 2027–2028 (DepEd Memorandum No. 89, s. 2025).
- Department of Education. (2025i). Consultation workshop and drafting of the Performance Management and Evaluation System (PMES) – Philippine Professional Standards for School Heads (PPSSH) tools (Memorandum DM-OUHROD-2025-3315, 19 November 2025).
- Department of Education. (2026a). Guidelines on the implementation of the three-term school calendar in basic education (DepEd Order No. 9, s. 2026).
- Department of Education. (2026b). Guidelines on learning continuity in emergencies (DepEd Order No. 14, s. 2026).
- Department of Education. (2026c). Allocation and release of the School Innovation and Improvement Fund to non-implementing unit public schools to strengthen decentralization practices in the Department of Education for fiscal year 2026 (DepEd Memorandum No. 48, s. 2026).
- Department of Education. (2026d). Guidelines on the Basic Education Information System (BEIS) data collection and validation for School Year 2025–2026 (DepEd Memorandum No. 28, s. 2026).
- Department of Education. (2026e). Anticipatory action, preparedness, and protective measures for the 2026–2027 Super El Niño (DepEd Memorandum No. 64, s. 2026).
- Department of Education–National Capital Region. (2019). School Improvement Plan (SIP) instructional videos, styleguide, appraisal process, and quality assessment (QA) tool (Regional Memorandum No. 13, s. 2019), forwarding an unnumbered Central Office memorandum dated 27 November 2018.
- Department of Education–Region VIII. (2023). Inputs in the formulation of the 2023–2028 school improvement plans (Regional Memorandum No. 301, s. 2023).
- The other issuances named under “What has been added to the SIP since 2015” are listed in its table of requirements.

### Reports and research

- Bruns, B., Filmer, D., & Patrinos, H. A. (2011). Making schools work: New evidence on accountability reforms. World Bank. https://doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-8679-8
- EDCOM II. (2024a). Miseducation: The failed system of Philippine education (Year One Report). Second Congressional Commission on Education.
- EDCOM II. (2024b, October 30). For two Gapan schools, low funding not a hindrance to improved learning outcomes \[News release\].
- EDCOM II. (2025). Fixing the foundations: A matter of national survival (Year Two Report). Second Congressional Commission on Education.
- EDCOM II. (2026a). Turning point: A decade of necessary reform (2026–2035) (Final Report). Second Congressional Commission on Education.
- EDCOM II. (2026b, February 12). Uneven loads of DepEd division offices creates logjams in school support and funding \[News release\].
- EDCOM II. (2026c, October 18). EDCOM pushes for 2027 budget to close the gap in school principals nationwide \[News release\].
- Fernandez, K. E. (2011). Evaluating school improvement plans and their affect on academic performance. Educational Policy, 25(2), 338–367. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904809351693
- Khattri, N., Ling, C., & Jha, S. (2010). The effects of school-based management in the Philippines: An initial assessment using administrative data (Policy Research Working Paper No. 5248). World Bank. https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-5248
- Kraft, M. A., & Papay, J. P. (2014). Can professional environments in schools promote teacher development? Explaining heterogeneity in returns to teaching experience. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(4), 476–500. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373713519496
- Laguda, R., Aquino, G., Cangayao, L., & Tagle, R. (2025). Realizing shared governance: Decentralization of Philippine basic education. The Asia Foundation and EDCOM II.
- Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2020). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership revisited. School Leadership & Management, 40(1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2019.1596077
- Leithwood, K., Louis, K. S., Anderson, S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2004). How leadership influences student learning. The Wallace Foundation.
- Meyers, C. V., & VanGronigen, B. A. (2019). A lack of authentic school improvement plan development: Evidence of principal satisficing behavior. Journal of Educational Administration, 57(3), 261–278. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-09-2018-0154
- OECD. (2023). PISA 2022 results: Factsheets – Philippines. OECD Publishing.
- Read, L., & Atinc, T. M. (2017). Investigations into using data to improve learning: Philippines case study. Brookings Institution.
- Strunk, K. O., Marsh, J. A., Bush-Mecenas, S. C., & Duque, M. R. (2016). The best laid plans: An examination of school plan quality and implementation in a school improvement initiative. Educational Administration Quarterly, 52(2), 259–309. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X15616864
- World Bank. (2016a). Assessing basic education service delivery in the Philippines: The Philippine Public Education Expenditure Tracking and Quantitative Service Delivery Study (Report AUS6799). https://doi.org/10.1596/24676
- World Bank. (2016b). Assessing school-based management in the Philippines (Philippines Education Note No. 5, Report 106953).
- Yamauchi, F. (2014). An alternative estimate of school-based management impacts on students’ achievements: Evidence from the Philippines (Policy Research Working Paper No. 6747). World Bank. https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-6747

For the official text of any issuance, visit the [official DepEd website](https://www.deped.gov.ph/). NASH Reviewer is not affiliated with DepEd, EDCOM II, BHROD, or NEAP.