TL;DR: Teaching Filipino in a Philippine school runs through a Bachelor of Secondary Education major in Filipino, one of six majors named in CHED Memorandum Order No. 75, s. 2017, followed by the Licensure Examination for Teachers, where the secondary exam is weighted 20 percent General Education, 40 percent Professional Education and 40 percent specialisation. What has changed recently is not the route but the territory: Republic Act No. 12027 reverted the medium of instruction in Kindergarten to Grade 3 to Filipino and English, the MATATAG Filipino Curriculum Guide covers Grades 2 to 10, and DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026 folded senior high Filipino into one core subject with English, Effective Communication and Mabisang Komunikasyon, with Filipino 1 and Filipino 2 moved to electives.
A note on scope first: this guide is about teaching the Filipino subject in Philippine schools. If you landed here looking for information about Filipino nationals teaching abroad, that runs on different rules entirely and none of this applies to it.
What Degree Does a Filipino Teacher Need?
A Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSEd) major in Filipino. The governing document is CHED Memorandum Order No. 75, s. 2017, the Policies, Standards and Guidelines for Bachelor of Secondary Education, issued under the Higher Education Act of 1994. Section 5.1 names the six majors the degree may carry:
| BSEd majors under CMO 75, s. 2017 |
|---|
| English |
| Filipino |
| Mathematics |
| Sciences |
| Social Studies |
| Values Education |
The Filipino major has its own program outcomes, and unusually for a CHED issuance they are written in Filipino. The six cover: demonstrating a high level of knowledge in teaching wika at panitikang Filipino; broad and deep understanding of the relationship between language, culture and society; competence in the teaching and learning process; knowledge of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the country; the design of creative, inquiry-based and integrative approaches; and the conduct of research toward the development of Filipino as a language of instruction.
The last one is worth pausing on. Research on Filipino bilang wikang panturo, as a language of instruction, is a named outcome of the degree rather than an optional extra, which matters given how much the medium-of-instruction policy has moved in the last two years.
Our broader guide on how to become a teacher in the Philippines covers the alternative route for people who already hold an unrelated degree.
Where Filipino Sits in the LET
The Licensure Examination for Teachers is administered by the PRC Board for Professional Teachers. For the secondary level the weighting is 20 percent General Education, 40 percent Professional Education and 40 percent specialisation, and Filipino is one of the specialisation areas. Passing needs a general average of at least 75 percent with no subject below 50 percent.
That 40 percent is the practical difference between a Filipino major and a generalist. Two-fifths of a secondary examinee's result comes from content knowledge in their subject, which is why the major is not interchangeable in practice even where a school's staffing needs are flexible. Our LET guide covers the exam structure, schedule and application requirements in full.
Where Is Filipino Actually Taught Now?
This is the part that has changed most, and it changes the job. Three separate issuances moved the ground in under two years.
| Level | What Filipino looks like now | Governing document |
|---|---|---|
| Kindergarten to Grade 3 | Mother tongue discontinued as medium of instruction; medium reverts to Filipino and English, with regional languages as auxiliary media | Republic Act No. 12027 |
| Grades 2 to 10 | Filipino as a learning area, with standards and competencies in one combined curriculum guide | MATATAG Filipino Curriculum Guide 2023 |
| Grade 11 | Effective Communication and Mabisang Komunikasyon as one 160-hour core subject with English and Filipino components; Pag-aaral ng Kasaysayan at Lipunang Pilipino as a separate core subject | DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026 |
| Grade 12 | No core subjects; Filipino 1 and Filipino 2 variants available as electives | DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026 |
Republic Act No. 12027, which lapsed into law in October 2024, discontinued the use of the mother tongue as medium of instruction from Kindergarten through the first three years of elementary education. Its operative provision states that the medium of instruction "shall revert to Filipino and, until otherwise provided by law, English, pursuant to Article XIV, Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution," with regional languages serving as auxiliary media. Mother tongue-based approaches may still be applied optionally in monolingual classes where the language meets stated conditions, including an official orthography and published vocabulary.
For the middle years, the operative document is the MATATAG Filipino Curriculum Guide, a single PDF covering Grades 2 to 10, published on deped.gov.ph. Our Filipino curriculum guide explainer covers what it contains and where to get the official file rather than a reformatted third-party copy.
At senior high, DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026 cut the core list to five subjects, all taken in Grade 11, each running 160 hours. Effective Communication and Mabisang Komunikasyon appears as a single core subject with English and Filipino components, not two separate subjects, which is why the core count is five rather than six. The old compulsory Filipino subjects were not deleted so much as moved: Komunikasyon at Pananaliksik and Pagbasa at Pagsusuri map to the elective Filipino 1, and the four Filipino sa Piling Larang variants map to the Filipino 2 electives. Our SHS core subjects guide documents the full mapping.
The Constitutional and Agency Frame
Two things sit behind all of the above and are worth knowing if you teach the subject.
The Constitution. Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution establishes Filipino as the national language and, in Section 7, governs the languages of instruction. RA 12027 cites that section directly as the basis for reverting the medium of instruction in the early grades.
The Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino. Created by Republic Act No. 7104, the Commission on the Filipino Language Act of 1991, the KWF is the government body tasked to undertake, coordinate and promote research for the development, propagation and preservation of Filipino as the national language, together with the country's other languages. It is the agency behind the annual national language campaign that schools observe.
That observance has its own rule now. Annex D of DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026 lists Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa under Proklamasyon Blg. 1041, s. 1997, running 1 to 31 August, with the objective of fostering national unity and pride by recognising the role of the national language, and a suggested mode of a school-level culminating activity plus lesson integration. The same order requires legislated activities to be conducted strictly within the classroom through integration into regular teaching, which changes what a Filipino department can plan for August. Our Buwan ng Wika guide covers the observance itself and is explicit about which parts of any given year's theme can be verified.
Pay, Hiring and What the Job Includes
Pay does not vary by subject. DepEd pay is set by rank, not by learning area. Teacher I sits at Salary Grade 11, a monthly basic of 31,705 pesos at Step 1 as of 1 January 2026 under DBM National Budget Circular No. 601, plus a flat 2,000 pesos monthly PERA and a 10,000-peso teaching allowance per school year under RA 11997. Our teacher salary guide breaks down every rank, allowance and deduction.
Hiring is decentralised. Applications go to the schools division office named in the current Call for Applications, not to a national portal, and successful applicants enter a Registry of Qualified Applicants.
One realistic caution. Filipino departments carry a disproportionate share of the co-curricular load in most schools, because the observances that produce culminating activities, contests and programme scripts tend to be language and culture ones. Under the three-term calendar those activities are pushed into the End-of-Term Blocks and into classroom integration rather than into instructional time, which is a genuine improvement on paper. Whether it lands that way in a particular school is a question for the school, not for a policy document.
Disclaimer: degree requirements, licensure coverage, curriculum documents and pay scales change. Verify with CHED, the PRC, DepEd and the DBM circular in force before making a decision based on any figure here.
Ready to find the right school? Browse schools and compare teacher education programmes, tuition and reviews across hundreds of Philippine schools on SchoolFinderPH.
Sources
- CHED Memorandum Order No. 75, s. 2017 - Policies, Standards and Guidelines for Bachelor of Secondary Education, full PDF, source of the six BSEd majors and the program outcomes for the Filipino major
- Republic Act No. 12027 - discontinuing the use of the mother tongue as medium of instruction from Kindergarten to Grade 3, full text, source of the reversion to Filipino and English and the auxiliary role of regional languages
- Supreme Court E-Library - Republic Act No. 12027, amending Sections 4 and 5 of RA 10533
- Republic Act No. 7104 - Commission on the Filipino Language Act, full text, source of the mandate of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino
- DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026 - Guidelines on the Implementation of the Three-Term School Calendar in Basic Education, full PDF, source of the Annex D entry for Buwan ng Wikang Pambansa and the classroom-integration rule
- SchoolFinderPH - DepEd Filipino curriculum guide
- SchoolFinderPH - Senior high core subjects under DO 017, s. 2026
- SchoolFinderPH - Teacher salary in the Philippines, with the DBM National Budget Circular No. 601 figures
