TL;DR: INSET stands for In-Service Training for Teachers. It is not created by an order of its own. Its days come from the school calendar order, currently DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026, which places professional development on two days of each End-of-Term Block for a minimum of 32 hours annually. Its content and reporting come from a national memorandum issued each year through the National Educators Academy of the Philippines (NEAP). Its budget splits: division-organised INSET is charged to human resource development funds, school-based INSET to school MOOE. And INSET is not the same thing as a Learning Action Cell session, which runs inside the instructional block under a different order.
Search for INSET and you will find slide decks, sample programmes and a hundred certificates. What is much harder to find is a plain statement of where the requirement comes from. This guide sets that out for teachers, school heads and education students who need to cite something.
What INSET Is, in DepEd's Own Words
The definition DepEd uses in its national guidelines is compact and worth quoting properly. INSET refers to a modality of professional development intervention organised either at the school, called school-based INSET, or at division or district level, called cluster-based INSET, to address and resolve areas of need identified by the teachers or school leaders in order to continuously improve their competencies. The same guidelines add that INSET classes are participatory and should be offered to small groups to maximise impact.
Two things follow from that definition. INSET is needs-based, so a programme that ignores identified needs is not really INSET even if the certificate says so. And it is two different animals depending on who organises it, which is exactly where the funding and reporting rules diverge.
| School-based INSET | Cluster-based INSET | |
|---|---|---|
| Organised by | The school | The schools division or district |
| Typical focus | Teachers' identified learning and development needs, plus dissemination of priority policies and programmes | Programmes cascaded from the NEAP central office |
| Funding source named in national guidance | School MOOE | INSET funds under the human resource development fund guidelines |
| Approving and reporting layer | School head, reporting upward | Division office, validated regionally |
Where the Days Come From
This is the part most explainers skip. INSET days are calendar days, and the calendar is set by a DepEd Order.
DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026, "Guidelines on the Implementation of the Three-Term School Calendar in Basic Education," dated 16 April 2026, restructured the school year into three terms, each ending with a two-week End-of-Term Block. The order lists what that block is for: ARAL Program sessions, computation of grades and completion of school forms, co-curricular and extracurricular activities, distribution of progress or performance reports, In-Service Training for Teachers, and wellness breaks for both learners and teachers.
The order then gives the structure. The End-of-Term Block runs for a minimum of eight days to a maximum of ten. Days 1 to 5 carry the ARAL sessions, grade computation and co-curricular activities. Day 6 is for distributing progress or performance reports and conferring with parents. Days 7 to 8 are allocated to INSET, described in the order as a 16-hour INSET per term. Days 7 to 10 are the learners' four-day wellness break, and teachers are granted a two-day wellness break within the block during which they are not to be assigned instructional, administrative or extracurricular duties except in an emergency.
Elsewhere the same order states the annual floor: professional development activities shall be organised in accordance with NEAP standards and conducted for two days during the End-of-Term Blocks, for a minimum of 32 hours annually.
Read those two provisions together and you get a per-term allocation of 16 hours alongside an annual floor of 32 hours across a three-term year. How they reconcile in your division depends on how the third term's block is used, since the third block runs into the end-of-school-year period. Follow your division memorandum rather than doing the arithmetic yourself. Our SY 2026-2027 school calendar guide covers the wider shape of the three-term year.
Disclaimer: the calendar order sets the national frame. Regions and divisions issue their own INSET memoranda each year with specific dates, topics and templates, and those are the operative documents for a particular school.
Where the Content Comes From
The annual guidelines are issued as a memorandum from the Office of the Undersecretary responsible for human resource and organisational development, through NEAP. Their structure has been consistent: they name the dates set by the school calendar order, restate the definition, then split the topics.
Division-organised INSET has been directed at NEAP central office programmes, for example professional learning packages in English, Mathematics and Science, and instructional leadership training. School-based INSET has been directed at teachers' own learning and development needs plus dissemination of named policies and priority programmes, which in recent years have included the national reading and mathematics programmes, early language literacy and numeracy, and standing policies such as the child protection policy and the rights-based education framework.
This is why an INSET programme in one division can look nothing like the one next door and both can be correct. The order fixes the days. The memorandum fixes the frame. The school and division fill it.
INSET Is Not a LAC Session
The two get conflated constantly, and the current calendar order separates them explicitly.
Learning Action Cell sessions are the school-based continuing professional development strategy established by DepEd Order No. 35, s. 2016, and DO 009, s. 2026 provides that they shall continue to be conducted within the Instructional Block, with further guidelines on scheduling to follow in a subsequent issuance.
INSET sits in the End-of-Term Block, outside instruction.
So a LAC session is a recurring, small-group, in-year practice. INSET is a scheduled block. Counting one as the other in a report is a common and avoidable error. For the broader professional development architecture and how programmes get recognised, see our NEAP teacher training guide.
Who Pays, and Who Reports
Funding. National INSET guidelines have set the split clearly. Expenses for division-organised INSET are chargeable against INSET funds under the multi-year implementing guidelines on the allocation and utilisation of the Human Resource Development Fund for teachers and school leaders. Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses may be used for school-based INSET under the implementing guidelines on the direct release and use of MOOE allocations of schools. Both are expressly subject to the usual government accounting and auditing rules. Our MOOE guide explains what school funds can and cannot cover.
Reporting. The returns run through the division. National guidelines have directed the Senior Education Program Specialists for human resource development and for school management monitoring and evaluation, both sitting in the School Governance and Operations Division, to encode the required data by a stated deadline, with the regional NEAP or human resource development division ensuring the correctness and accuracy of the reports. Our SGOD explainer covers those sections.
What INSET Is Not
- It is not a statutory right. The Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, Republic Act No. 4670, grants study leave after seven years of service, but it does not create an in-service training entitlement. INSET rests on administrative issuances.
- It is not automatically credited professional development. Recognition of a professional development programme against NEAP standards is a separate process from turning up to a school session.
- It is not a performance requirement in itself. Attendance records may end up as evidence for a non-classroom observable objective under the current teacher performance system, but that is a downstream use. Our guide to means of verification covers what evidence is actually required now.
- It is not optional for the school to schedule. The calendar order allocates the days; a school that quietly fills days 7 and 8 with something else is out of line with the order.
Practical Notes for School Heads
- Cite DO 009, s. 2026 for the days and the current year's national memorandum for the content. Do not cite a nonexistent "DepEd Order on INSET".
- Do the needs analysis first. The definition is needs-based, and an INSET plan with no reference to identified needs is hard to defend in monitoring.
- Keep the funding streams clean. School-based sessions on MOOE, division-organised sessions on human resource development funds. Mixing them creates audit findings.
- Protect the wellness break. The order says teachers shall not be assigned duties during it. Scheduling INSET over it defeats the purpose of the block.
- Report on time. The encoding deadline sits with division specialists, but the data comes from schools, and late school returns are the usual reason a division misses it.
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Sources
- DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026 — Guidelines on the Implementation of the Three-Term School Calendar in Basic Education (official PDF, sets the End-of-Term Block and the INSET allocation)
- DepEd — Guidelines on the Conduct of the In-Service Training for Teachers (INSET), official memorandum text with the definition, funding split and reporting chain
- DepEd — Guidelines on the Conduct of the In-Service Training for Teachers (INSET) announcement page
- Republic Act No. 4670 — Magna Carta for Public School Teachers, full text
- SchoolFinderPH — NEAP teacher training guide
- SchoolFinderPH — DepEd school calendar for SY 2026-2027
