TL;DR: The special education degree in the Philippines is now the Bachelor of Special Needs Education (BSNEd), prescribed by CHED CMO No. 77, series of 2017. It comes in five versions - a generalist degree at 140 units and four specialisations running from 155 to 173 units. It leads to a board exam: Professional Teachers is a PRC regulatory board, and under the PRC's published implementing guidelines BSNEd graduates now sit the licensure examination at the elementary level with a BSNEd specialisation paper.
If you searched "special education course" expecting to find "BSEd major in SPED", that title is what CHED moved away from. CMO No. 77 explicitly requires institutions still offering a Bachelor of Special Education, a BEEd with a Special Education specialisation, or a BSEd major in Special Education to shift to the outcomes-based BSNEd and to secure approval for that shift. If a school is still advertising the old title, that is a question to ask, not a detail to ignore.
What BSNEd Is
CMO No. 77 describes the thrust of the field as teaching "children and youth with additional needs", and says the degree "will enable its graduates to teach subjects in general/regular education settings while addressing learning concerns of students with additional needs. Graduates may also teach in special education centers and clinical settings."
The order also notes that the curriculum was built around the various laws and international agreements on the subject, "especially the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on quality education for persons with special educational needs, making Filipino mainstream education inclusive and accessible to all." The document uses "learners with additional needs", "learners with special educational needs", "learners with exceptionalities" and "learners with special needs" interchangeably.
The Five Variants and Their Unit Counts
Section 5.1 of CMO No. 77 sets one generalist degree and four specialisations. The sample curricula in the order carry different totals:
| Degree variant | General Ed | Professional Ed | SNEd major | Specialisation | PE and NSTP | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BSNEd (Generalist) | 36 | 42 | 48 | - | 14 | 140 |
| BSNEd with Early Childhood Education | 36 | 42 | 42 | 24 | 14 | 158 |
| BSNEd with Teaching Learners with Visual Impairment | 36 | 42 | 45 | 18 | 14 | 155 |
| BSNEd with Teaching Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Learners | 36 | 42 | 45 | 18 | 14 | 155 |
| BSNEd with Elementary School Teaching | 36 | 42 | 27 | 54 | 14 | 173 |
The pattern is worth reading carefully. The specialisations do not simply add courses on top of the generalist degree - they trade some of the special needs education major block for specialisation units. The Elementary School Teaching variant trades the most: it drops the SNEd major to 27 units and adds 54 units of elementary teaching content, because its graduates are meant to work as regular classroom teachers in inclusive schools.
The Special Needs Education Major Courses
The SNEd major block is the spine of every variant. In the generalist curriculum it runs to 48 units, and the named courses include:
- Learners with Developmental Disabilities
- Learners with Sensory and Physical Disabilities
- Learners with Emotional, Behavioral, Language and Communication Disabilities
- Gifted and Talented Learners
- Curriculum and Pedagogy in Inclusive Education
- Educational Assessment of Students with Additional Needs
- Behavior Management and Modification
- Adapted Physical Education and Recreation, Music and Health
- Instructional Adaptations in Language and Literacy Instruction
- Instructional Adaptations in Mathematics and Science Instruction
- Instructional Adaptations for Teaching the Content Areas (Social Sciences, Humanities)
- Development of Individualized Education Plans
- Early Childhood Inclusive Education
- Transition Education
- Research in Special Needs and Inclusive Education
- Teaching Multi-grade Classes
Note two of these. Development of Individualized Education Plans is the course behind the IEP process that parents deal with directly - our guide on inclusive education and IEPs covers what that document does in a school. Transition Education is the one that deals with moving a learner towards adult life and work, and it is the part most often skipped when schools improvise a special education programme without a properly trained teacher.
The specialisation blocks are technical. The Visual Impairment specialisation is Functional Vision Assessment, Orientation and Mobility, Braille Reading and Writing, Instructional Strategies for Learners with Visual Impairment, Assistive Technologies for Learners with Visual Impairment, and a Field Experience course. The Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing specialisation covers educational and communication philosophies in deaf education, Filipino Sign Language, artificial sign systems, language development and literacy instruction, instructional strategies, and its own field experience.
The Licensure Exam - and What Changed
CMO No. 77 is direct about the licence: a graduate "should be able to teach in regular and special education schools as a teacher provided that he/she passes the Licensure Examination for Teachers in his/her subject area of specialization."
What changed recently is the exam itself. The PRC published guidelines implementing a PRC-CHED joint memorandum circular that aligns the Licensure Examination for Professional Teachers with the teacher education curriculum. Under those guidelines, at the elementary level, current-curriculum BSNEd graduates take General Education, Professional Education and a BSNEd specialisation paper. Graduates of the old curriculum who took a BEEd with a major in Special Needs Education take the same three components with a Special Needs Education specialisation. Holders of a master's degree in special needs education with an education-related undergraduate degree or a professional education certificate are also mapped to that specialisation paper.
The guidelines further state that BSNEd applicants are all treated as first-time applicants, which means personal appearance at a PRC regional office with documentary requirements rather than the shorter repeater process. Plan the application step into your timeline. Our LET guide covers the mechanics; the PRC announces each cycle's schedule itself, so do not build a review plan around a date from a third-party site.
Careers, and Why Demand Is Rising
CMO No. 77 sets out where each variant is meant to land:
- Generalist graduates: special education centres and clinics as special education teachers, therapists or clinicians; regular schools practising inclusion, as learning support staff and special education teachers.
- With Early Childhood Education: regular schools as early childhood teachers, special education teachers and learning support staff; special education centres as special education teachers.
- With Visual Impairment or Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing specialisation: special education centres and regular inclusive schools, as special education teachers and learning support staff.
- With Elementary School Teaching: regular classroom or subject teachers in inclusive schools, or teaching in special education centres.
- All variants: centre-, home- and community-based settings as intervention specialists, job or behaviour coaches, and tutors.
The policy backdrop matters here. Republic Act No. 11650, approved on 11 March 2022, institutes a policy of inclusion "in all early and basic education schools, both public and private", bars schools from denying admission on the basis of disability, and establishes Inclusive Learning Resource Centers to provide support and related services with specialised personnel and adaptive materials. The law describes special needs education teachers as holders of degrees in special needs education who work in partnership with general education teachers, and defines learning support aides as a separate, distinct role.
Put plainly: the law creates named positions that a BSNEd degree is the qualification for. Our overview of special education in the Philippines covers how the system works from the family's side, and SPED schools in the Philippines covers where these programmes actually run.
What to Check Before You Enrol
- Ask which variant the school is authorised to offer. Five variants exist on paper; a given department may run one. If you want the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing specialisation, confirm it is actually offered, with faculty who can teach Filipino Sign Language.
- Ask whether the programme has already shifted to BSNEd. A school still conferring "BSEd major in Special Education" is running a title CMO No. 77 required institutions to move away from, and that affects which licensure track you fall into.
- Ask where field experience is done. The specialisation blocks each include a field experience course, and the quality of the placement site is most of the learning.
- Ask about the practice teaching block. Like every teacher education degree, the 42-unit Professional Education component includes Field Study and Teaching Internship.
- Ask about the reality of the job market in your region. Special education posts in public schools are item-dependent; talk to a division office, not only to the school marketing team.
- Budget for the licence, not just the tuition. Application, review and PRC registration all come after your final tuition payment. For what the job pays afterwards, see teacher salary in the Philippines.
Bottom Line
BSNEd is a demanding degree with a licence at the end and a law behind it. The single most useful thing a prospective student can do is get the variant right, because the five versions lead to genuinely different classrooms - a generalist in a special education centre, an early childhood specialist with under-eights, a Braille and orientation-and-mobility specialist, a sign language specialist, or a regular elementary teacher trained to run an inclusive room. Ask the school which one it is authorised to award before you enrol, not in your third year.
Looking for schools? Browse schools on SchoolFinderPH to compare education programmes across the country.
Sources
- CHED CMO No. 77, series of 2017 - PSGs for the Bachelor of Special Needs Education (official PDF)
- Professional Regulation Commission - Guidelines on the Implementation of the PRC-CHED JMC on the Alignment of the LEPT with the Teacher Education Curriculum
- Professional Regulation Commission - Professional Regulatory Boards
- LawPhil - Republic Act No. 11650, Instituting a Policy of Inclusion and Services for Learners with Disabilities in Support of Inclusive Education Act
- LawPhil - Republic Act No. 7836, Philippine Teachers Professionalization Act of 1994
