Quick Answer: The NCAE is DepEd's career assessment for Grade 10 learners, administered by the Bureau of Education Assessment under the authority of DepEd Order No. 55, s. 2016. It has two domains: General Scholastic Aptitude, covering seven reasoning and accuracy areas, and the Career and Occupational Roles Explorer, an interest inventory. It is not pass-or-fail, results come back as standard scores and percentile ranks on a Certificate of Ratings handed to the learner through the school, and DepEd's own order says the results are recommendatory with no prescribed cut-off. Since School Year 2025-2026 it has been delivered as a computer-based test.
If you searched for NCAE results, the short version is that nobody publishes them. Certificates of Ratings travel from the Bureau of Education Assessment down through the regional and division offices to your school, and your school hands you yours. What most people actually need is the part before that: what the test measures, how much weight the score carries, and whether the guidance they read online still describes the exam that exists. On the last point the answer is often no, because the order that governs the NCAE was written in 2016 and the test has moved on. This guide separates what the issuances say from what is now stale. If you are working out where you are headed after Grade 10, pair it with our guides to Senior High tracks and strands and what strand you should take.
What Is the NCAE and Which Issuance Governs It?
The National Career Assessment Examination is a career guidance instrument, not an admission test. Its legal basis is DepEd Order No. 55, s. 2016, the Policy Guidelines on the National Assessment of Student Learning for the K to 12 Basic Education Program, which set up career assessment alongside the other national assessments DepEd runs.
Each cycle is then triggered by a separate memorandum. The most recent national one, DepEd Memorandum No. 108, s. 2025, dated 11 December 2025, directed that the Computer-Based NCAE be administered for School Year 2025-2026 "pursuant to DepEd Order (DO) No. 55, s. 2016." It names the Bureau of Education Assessment as the administering office, working with schools division offices and secondary school personnel.
That two-layer structure matters when you are checking a claim. The order supplies the authority and the policy language; the yearly memorandum supplies the grade level, the window, and the delivery mode. Where the two disagree, the memorandum is what schools actually ran.
Disclaimer: DepEd issues NCAE memoranda separately each school year and division offices set their own testing dates within the national window. Confirm current arrangements with your school or schools division office rather than relying on any cycle described here.
Who Takes the NCAE, and When?
DepEd Memorandum No. 108, s. 2025 covers "all Grade 10 learners who are currently enrolled in public and private schools with government permits or recognition." That is a census administration, not a sample and not an opt-in.
The scheduling is deliberately decentralised. The national memorandum set a testing window and then stated that "the testing dates within the testing window shall be determined by the SDOs in coordination with the regional office." Two learners in neighbouring divisions can sit the same cycle weeks apart.
The School Year 2025-2026 cycle is a useful case study in why you should not treat any published date as fixed. The national memorandum named a December 2025 to January 2026 window; division memoranda then relayed a January 7 to 30, 2026 testing period; and DepEd subsequently extended administration through February 2026 to accommodate schools and learners who had not been able to take or finish the test. Reporting at the time attributed the extension to system problems during the first nationwide computer-based run.
We do not publish next cycle's dates. Any site that states them as fact before DepEd issues the memorandum is guessing.
What Does the NCAE Test?
Two domains, described in DepEd Memorandum No. 108, s. 2025:
| Domain | What it contains | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| General Scholastic Aptitude (GSA) | Abstract Reasoning, Logical Reasoning, Mechanical Reasoning, Numerical Reasoning, Spatial Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning (English and Filipino), Perceptual Accuracy and Response Efficiency (PARE) | Aptitude across seven reasoning and accuracy areas |
| Career and Occupational Roles Explorer (CORE) | CORE-A (RIASEC), CORE-B (Thurstone Model) | Occupational interests, inclinations and preferences |
The split is the whole point. GSA asks what you can do; CORE asks what you are drawn to. A guidance conversation that only looks at one half of the profile is using half the instrument.
Note how far this is from the design written into DepEd Order No. 55, s. 2016 itself, which described a General Scholastic Aptitude built from Scientific Ability, Reading Comprehension, Verbal Ability, Mathematical Ability and Logical Reasoning Ability, plus an Occupational Interest Inventory and a separate aptitude test for the four Senior High tracks. The instrument was rebuilt; the order was not rewritten. If a description you are reading lists "Occupational Interest Inventory" and a Grade 9 sitting, it is quoting 2016 text.
How Are NCAE Results Reported?
Results come back as a Certificate of Ratings. DepEd Order No. 55, s. 2016 specifies that the certificate reports the learner's General Scholastic Aptitude, occupational interest with first and second preferences, and the track they opt to pursue set against their aptitude, with results expressed in standard scores and percentile ranks.
Percentile rank is where most readers go wrong, so here is an illustrative reading, not a real learner's record: a percentile rank of 72 in Numerical Reasoning does not mean 72 percent of the items were answered correctly. It means the learner scored at or above roughly 72 percent of the comparison group. A raw-score reading of a percentile rank is the single most common misinterpretation of an NCAE certificate.
The distribution route is fixed by the same order: the Bureau of Education Assessment releases results to regions and divisions, divisions forward them to schools, and original copies of the Certificate of Ratings go to the learners. There is no public results portal, no searchable list, and no legitimate third-party site holding individual scores.
Does the NCAE Decide Your Senior High Track?
This is where the stale guidance does real damage, because DepEd Order No. 55, s. 2016 genuinely did prescribe entry criteria: a required cut-off for the STEM strand set at a Grade 10 final grade of 85 and above in both Science and Mathematics plus a percentile rank of 86 and above in the STEM subtest, and a percentile rank of 51 and above as a first screening for the Sports and Arts and Design tracks, with a second skills-based screening run by the accepting school. It set no cut-off for HUMSS, ABM or TVL.
Two things have happened since.
First, the same order contradicts itself. Its test interpretation section states that "the career assessment results shall be recommendatory. No cut-off score shall be prescribed by DepEd," and that the learner's own career choice "shall prevail."
Second, and decisively, DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026 introduced the Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum for all public and private Senior High Schools starting School Year 2026-2027. It restructured Senior High into two tracks, Academic and Tech-Pro, with clusters of Electives replacing the old strand map, and it repealed issuances inconsistent with it. In its Career Guidance Program section it lists NCAE results as one of several tools schools are encouraged to use, alongside interest inventories, career clinics and the Landas Toolkit, and states that the programme "is not intended to prescribe or impose any specific career path" and that "the learner's informed choice shall be respected and prioritized."
So the four-track entry table those cut-offs were written for no longer describes the curriculum. Our Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum guide covers what replaced it. Individual schools, especially private and science high schools, may still run their own admission screening, which is a separate matter from a DepEd-wide cut-off.
How Should You Actually Use Your Certificate of Ratings?
- Read the two halves together. A high Mechanical Reasoning percentile paired with a low Realistic interest score is a genuinely useful signal, and it is invisible if you only look at GSA.
- Treat a single subtest as a data point, not a verdict. One low percentile on a test taken in one sitting, on a school computer, in a room of thirty, is weak evidence about a whole career.
- Bring it to your guidance teacher. DepEd Order No. 55, s. 2016 frames interpretation as a guided conversation, not a printout. Our homeroom guidance guide explains where that sits in the school week.
- Keep the original. It is your copy, issued once, and schools are not obliged to reprint it.
- Do not pay anyone for your results. They are released free through your school.
What About Accommodations?
DepEd Memorandum No. 108, s. 2025 states that learners with disabilities may be assessed provided the test accommodations in Section 9 of DepEd Order No. 55, s. 2016 are met. It goes further for one group: learners who have difficulty seeing, including visually impaired learners, may opt to skip the image-heavy subtests, and it names them as Abstract Reasoning, Mechanical Reasoning, Spatial Reasoning, and Perceptual Accuracy and Response Efficiency.
The same memorandum also acknowledges the practical constraint that shaped the computer-based rollout, noting "the limited availability of functional computer units and challenges in internet connectivity in some schools" and encouraging schools to coordinate with nearby or partner schools, with transfer of learners permitted only within the school district.
Checking the Rules Yourself
DepEd publishes its orders and memoranda in full, and every claim above is traceable to one of them. If you want to verify a specific point, our guide on how to find DepEd Orders covers where issuances are posted and how to tell an order from a memorandum. It is a habit worth building, because NCAE guidance circulating on social media is frequently several policy generations behind.
Ready to find the right school? Browse schools or compare Senior High offerings, tuition, and programmes across hundreds of Philippine schools on SchoolFinderPH.
Sources
- DepEd - DM 108, s. 2025: Administration of the Computer-Based National Career Assessment Examination for School Year 2025-2026
- DepEd - DO 55, s. 2016: Policy Guidelines on the National Assessment of Student Learning for the K to 12 Basic Education Program
- DepEd - DO 017, s. 2026: Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum
- DepEd Region III - DepEd Region III administers NCAE for Grade 10 students
- Manila Standard - Online failures force DepEd to extend NCAE
- SchoolFinderPH - Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum
