TL;DR: A DepEd Curriculum Guide (CG) is the official per-subject document listing content standards, performance standards, and learning competencies by grade and quarter, distinct from a Teaching Guide (classroom lesson exemplars) or a MELC list (a distilled, temporary subset of competencies used during the pandemic). As of SY 2026-2027, the MATATAG Curriculum Guides cover every subject from Kindergarten through Grade 10, all hosted on deped.gov.ph's Revised K to 10 Curriculum page. Senior High School runs on a separate reform, the Strengthened SHS Program, with its own curriculum guides published elsewhere on the DepEd site.
Searching "curriculum guide DepEd" usually turns up a mix of official PDFs, third-party mirrors, and outdated partial versions from MATATAG's early rollout phases, which makes it hard to tell what's current. This hub indexes the official file for every K-10 subject, verified directly against deped.gov.ph, and links out to our subject-specific breakdowns for English, Science, Math, and Filipino. For background on the broader reform these guides belong to, see our MATATAG curriculum guide and our overview of the K-12 system.
What Is a DepEd Curriculum Guide?
A Curriculum Guide (CG) is DepEd's official, subject-specific document that defines what learners in a given grade and quarter are expected to know and be able to do. Per definitions DepEd uses in its own CG documents (drawn from DepEd Order No. 8, s. 2015 and DepEd Order No. 21, s. 2019), a CG is built from several standard components:
- Content Standard — what learners should know, covering a specified scope of topics
- Performance Standard — the abilities and skills learners should demonstrate in relation to the content standard
- Learning Competency — a specific, gradable skill, tagged with a short alphanumeric code
- Content Domain — a strand of the curriculum (like "Number and Algebra" in Math) grouping related topics and skills
- Key Stage — a developmental grouping of grades (K-3, 4-6, 7-10, and 11-12) with its own standard
A CG is not a lesson plan. It states the destination and the checkpoints, not the day-to-day route a teacher takes to get there.
How Is a Curriculum Guide Different From a Teaching Guide or a Learning Competency List?
| Document | What It Is | Who Publishes It |
|---|---|---|
| Curriculum Guide (CG) | The official standards and competencies for a subject, by grade and quarter | DepEd Bureau of Curriculum Development |
| Teaching Guide (TG) | Classroom-ready lesson exemplars and pedagogical notes built from the CG | DepEd, where published, varies by subject |
| Learner's Material (LM) | The student-facing textbook or workbook aligned to the CG | DepEd, distributed to public schools |
| MELC | A 2020 distilled, prioritized subset of CG competencies for pandemic-era distance learning | DepEd Bureau of Curriculum Development |
A MELC list is worth calling out specifically because it is easy to mistake for a full CG. In 2020, DepEd's Bureau of Curriculum Development cut the 2016 curriculum's competency count down from roughly 14,171 to about 5,689 "Most Essential Learning Competencies," selected using an "endurance" criterion, meaning competencies useful well beyond a single lesson or test. A MELC document is a subset of an older CG, not a replacement for the current one, and it predates MATATAG entirely.
Where Does DepEd Officially Publish Curriculum Guides?
The current, consolidated set of K to 10 curriculum guides lives on deped.gov.ph's Revised K to 10 Curriculum page. Files there are named with a "FINAL-MATATAG" prefix and a grade range, for example "FINAL-MATATAG-English-CG-2023-Grades-2-10-withAppendices.pdf." A separate, earlier page from MATATAG's first rollout phase hosts partial files limited to the initial Phase 1 grades (K, 1, 4, and 7); those are now superseded for any grade outside that original set.
| Subject | Current File Grade Coverage |
|---|---|
| English | Grades 2-10 |
| Filipino | Grades 2-10 |
| Language (L1) | Grade 1 |
| Reading and Literacy (L1) | Grade 1 |
| Mathematics | Grades 1-10 |
| Science | Grades 3-10 |
| Araling Panlipunan | Grades 4-10 |
| Makabansa | Grades 1-3 |
| GMRC and Values Education | Grades 1-10 |
| Music and Arts | Grades 4-10 |
| PE and Health | Grades 4-10 |
| EPP/TLE | Grades 4-10 |
| Kindergarten (all learning areas) | Kindergarten |
Disclaimer: DepEd occasionally renames or relocates files on deped.gov.ph. If a specific link in our subject posts returns a 404, search the exact subject and "MATATAG curriculum guide" directly on the DepEd website rather than relying on a third-party mirror, which may host an outdated version.
What Are Budget of Work Documents, and Are They the Same as a CG?
No. Alongside the curriculum guides, deped.gov.ph's K to 10 curriculum page also hosts separate Budget of Work (BOW) files, organized by grade rather than by subject. A BOW takes the competencies already defined in a subject's CG and lays out a suggested weekly or quarterly pacing schedule for covering them within the school year. In other words, a CG defines what to teach and by when in broad terms (per quarter), while a BOW is a more granular scheduling tool built from that same CG.
Schools and individual teachers sometimes adjust their own pacing within the CG's quarterly structure, so treat a published BOW as a starting template rather than a fixed requirement, especially if your school has its own approved instructional calendar.
Does MATATAG Cover Senior High School?
No. MATATAG is explicitly a Kindergarten-to-Grade-10 reform. Senior High School (Grades 11-12) runs on a separate, more recent overhaul called the Strengthened SHS Program, piloted for Grade 11 in 800 schools in SY 2025-2026 and set for full implementation starting SY 2026-2027. It replaces the old four-track system with two tracks, Academic and Technical-Professional, and consolidates the previous 15 core subjects into a smaller set of integrated learning areas. Its curriculum guides are published separately on DepEd's Strengthened SHS Program page, not on the K to 10 curriculum page. If you're looking for SHS-specific guidance instead, see our SHS tracks and strands guide.
The Science Shaping Paper that accompanies the K-10 MATATAG guides frames the whole reform around four goals: "MAking the curriculum relevant to produce competent and job-ready, active, and responsible citizens," alongside accelerating delivery of basic education services, caring for learner well-being, and supporting teachers to teach better, the source of the MATATAG acronym itself.
How Should Teachers Use the Curriculum Guide Day to Day?
The CG functions as the reference document you plan backward from, not a document to read cover to cover before every lesson. In practice:
- Start from the Content and Performance Standards for your grade and quarter to set the destination for the unit.
- Use the Learning Competency codes to tag lesson plans and track coverage, which matters for computing quarterly grades under the DepEd grading system.
- Check the Key Stage Standard for your grade band to understand where this year fits into the longer arc of the subject.
- Cross-reference with your school's Teaching Guide or Learner's Material, where one exists, for suggested activities, since the CG itself does not include lesson plans.
- Verify you have the current, full-grade-range file, not a partial Phase 1 or Phase 2 file that only covers some grades, especially now that Phase 3 has brought Grades 6, 9, and 10 onto MATATAG for SY 2026-2027.
Tips for Finding the Right File
- Search deped.gov.ph directly rather than the first result in a general web search, which is often a third-party reformatted copy.
- Check the file name for a grade range, not just a subject name. "Grades 4 and 7" and "Grades 2-10" are very different documents for the same subject.
- Save a local copy once verified, since DepEd occasionally reorganizes its site structure and links can move.
- Ask your division or school curriculum coordinator if a file seems out of date; divisions sometimes circulate updated internal copies before DepEd Central re-publishes them.
- Don't confuse a CG with a MELC document if you find an older file online; check the title page for "MATATAG" and a 2023 or later date.
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Sources
- DepEd — Revised K to 10 Curriculum (official)
- DepEd — MATATAG Curriculum Phase 1, SY 2024-2025 (official)
- DepEd — Strengthened SHS Program (official)
- DepEd Order No. 010, s. 2024 — Policy Guidelines on the Implementation of the MATATAG Curriculum (official)
- DepEd Memorandum No. 48, s. 2025 — Pilot Implementation of the Strengthened SHS Curriculum for Grade 11, SY 2025-2026 (official PDF)
- DepEd Order No. 21, s. 2019 — Policy Guidelines on the K to 12 Basic Education Program (official PDF)
- Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCs) — DepEd Learning Resource Portal (official)
- SchoolFinderPH — MATATAG Curriculum Guide
- SchoolFinderPH — K-12 Curriculum in the Philippines
- SchoolFinderPH — DepEd English Curriculum Guide
- SchoolFinderPH — DepEd Science Curriculum Guide
- SchoolFinderPH — DepEd Math Curriculum Guide
- SchoolFinderPH — SHS Tracks and Strands Explained
