TL;DR: Specialised subjects were the strand-specific half of the 2016 Senior High School curriculum, defined in DepEd Order No. 21, s. 2019, Annex 2 on Secondary Education, at 80 hours per subject per semester. Each strand had its own table in that annex, and the tables are the only authoritative list. One detail almost every online strand guide gets wrong: Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction is not a STEM specialised subject. It is a special core curriculum subject that STEM learners take instead of Physical Science, alongside Earth Science, to avoid repeating content. DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026 removed the specialised subject category and replaced it with elective clusters, which the order states are deliberately not strands.
If you searched "specialized subjects SHS", you probably wanted a list. Below is the list DepEd actually published, strand by strand, followed by what replaced it. The department uses the American spelling in some documents and the British one in others; both refer to the same category.
What a Specialised Subject Was
Paragraph 40 of Annex 2 to DO 21, s. 2019 puts it in one line: specialised subjects "have content streamlined to each SHS track."
Structurally, a 2016 Senior High learner took 15 core subjects plus 16 track subjects. The 16 split into seven applied subjects, which every track took in a contextualised form, and the remainder as strand-specific specialised subjects. Applied and specialised together came to 1,280 hours. The applied half is covered in our applied subjects guide.
Academic Track: STEM
Table 2.11 lists the STEM specialised subjects:
- Pre-Calculus
- Basic Calculus
- General Biology 1
- General Biology 2
- General Physics 1
- General Physics 2
- General Chemistry 1 and 2
- Work Immersion / Research / Career Advocacy / Culminating Activity
Then comes the part that trips people up. Paragraph 44 of the annex explains that Physical Science consists of basic Physics and Chemistry topics and Earth and Life Science includes basic Biology, all already covered in the STEM subjects above. So STEM learners swapped those two core subjects for two others, listed in Table 2.12 as Special Core Curriculum Subjects: Earth Science and Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction.
That means DRRR was, for a STEM learner, a core subject rather than a specialised one. Any list that files it under "STEM specialised subjects" is misreading the order. The strand as a whole is covered in our STEM strand guide.
Academic Track: ABM
Table 2.10 lists eleven entries for Accountancy, Business and Management:
- Applied Economics
- Business Ethics and Social Responsibility
- Fundamentals of Accountancy, Business and Management 1, split across Grade 11 Quarters 3 and 4
- Fundamentals of Accountancy, Business and Management 2, split across Grade 12 Quarters 1 and 2
- Business Math
- Business Finance
- Organization and Management
- Principles of Marketing
- Work Immersion / Research / Career Advocacy / Culminating Activity, delivered as Business Enterprise Simulation
The Business Enterprise Simulation curriculum guide was later attached as an enclosure to DepEd Order No. 39, s. 2018, and lists Business Math, Organization and Management, both FABM subjects, Principles of Marketing and Business Finance as prerequisites. Our ABM strand guide goes through what each of these involved.
Academic Track: HUMSS
Table 2.13 lists four humanities subjects and four social science subjects plus a culminating activity:
- Creative Writing / Malikhaing Pagsulat
- Creative Nonfiction
- Introduction to World Religions and Belief Systems
- Community Engagement, Solidarity and Citizenship
- Philippine Politics and Governance
- Trends, Networks and Critical Thinking in the 21st Century
- Disciplines and Ideas in the Social Sciences
- Disciplines and Ideas in the Applied Social Sciences
- HUMSS Culminating Activity / Work Immersion
See our HUMSS strand guide for how these map onto college programmes.
Academic Track: General Academic Strand
Table 2.14 is the odd one out, because GAS was designed for undecided learners and for small schools. It draws its subjects from the other strands:
- Humanities 1 and Humanities 2, taken from the HUMSS subject list
- Social Science 1, likewise from HUMSS
- Applied Economics and Organization and Management, taken from ABM
- Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction, which the annex describes as a subject from the special core curriculum subjects for the STEM strand
- Elective 1 and Elective 2, which may come from any track or strand
- Work Immersion / Research / Career Advocacy / Culminating Activity
Our GAS strand guide explains why that borrowed structure suited some learners and frustrated others.
Sports, Arts and Design, and TVL
Sports Track, Table 2.15: Safety and First Aid, Human Movement, Fundamentals of Coaching, Sports Officiating and Activity Management, Fitness Sports and Recreation Leadership, Psychosocial Aspects of Sports and Exercise, Fitness Testing and Exercise Programming, and Practicum (in-campus). The annex notes that Safety and First Aid may lead to a Philippine Red Cross certification, and that Sports Officiating and Activity Management ends with certification by National Sports Associations and TESDA.
Arts and Design Track, Tables 2.16 and 2.17: six general subjects, including Creative Industries I and II, Physical and Personal Development in the Arts, Developing Filipino Identity in the Arts, Integrating the Elements and Principles of Organization in the Arts, and Leadership and Management in Different Arts Fields. A learner then picks an arts field and takes an apprenticeship subject, allocated 160 hours rather than 80, plus a culminating exhibit or production.
TVL Track: four strands, Agri-Fishery Arts, Home Economics, Information and Communication Technology, and Industrial Arts, with specialisations aligned to TESDA Training Regulations rather than to standalone DepEd subject descriptions. Our TVL strand guide covers how the national certificate side works.
What Replaced the Category
DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026 amends DO 21, s. 2019, specifically Annex 2 on Secondary Education. It replaces the three-way split with five Grade 11 Core Subjects plus Electives, and it is unusually blunt about why clusters are not strands: schools "are not required to offer all Electives within a cluster, and learners may select Electives across multiple clusters."
The Academic Track now has five clusters, Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities; Business and Entrepreneurship; Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; Sports, Health and Wellness; and Field Experience. The Technical-Professional Track, formerly TVL, has ten. Academic electives run 80 or 160 hours; Tech-Pro electives are standardised at 320 hours each and must align with TESDA Training Regulations, with teachers required to hold the corresponding National Certificate.
Annex F.2 of the order maps the old specialised subjects onto the new electives. General Biology 1 and 2 become Biology 1 to 4. General Chemistry 1 and 2 become Chemistry 1 to 4. General Physics 1 and 2 become Physics 1 to 4. Earth Science together with Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction becomes Earth and Space Science 1 to 4. Physical Science becomes Conceptual Physics and Chemistry in Daily Life. On the ABM side, the two Fundamentals of Accountancy subjects become Business 1 (Basic Accounting), Business Finance becomes Business 2, and Applied Economics becomes Business 3.
Timing matters here. DO 017 phases the change in with Grade 11 in SY 2026-2027 and Grade 12 in SY 2027-2028, and provides that Grade 12 learners in non-pilot schools this school year continue on the 2016 curriculum. So specialised subjects are still being taught right now, to one grade level, in most schools.
Deciding where to enrol? Browse schools and compare tracks, tuition and reviews across the Philippines on SchoolFinderPH.
Sources
- DepEd — DO 21, s. 2019, Policy Guidelines on the K to 12 Basic Education Program (official PDF, Annex 2 Secondary Education)
- DepEd — DO 017, s. 2026, Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum
- DepEd — DO 39, s. 2018, Clarification and Additional Information to DepEd Order No. 30, s. 2017 (Guidelines on Work Immersion)
- DepEd — Strengthened SHS curriculum guide, Earth and Space Science 1 (official PDF)
- DepEd — Strengthened SHS curriculum guide, Physics 1 (official PDF)
- SchoolFinderPH — Strengthened SHS Curriculum: What Changed
- SchoolFinderPH — SHS Tracks and Strands Explained
