What a Form 137 Looks Like, Section by Section

TL;DR: Form 137, now School Form 10, is a legal-size document with a fixed structure: a personal information block at the top (name as it appears on the PSA birth certificate, Learner Reference Number, birthdate, sex), a credential-presented field showing what made the learner eligible to enrol, then a stack of grade-level tables — one per school year — each carrying the school name and six-digit school ID, district, division, region, every learning area in the same order as the report card, four quarterly ratings, a final rating per subject, and a general average. A remedial block records recomputed grades. A certification block, signed by the school head in ink and stamped with the school dry seal, is what makes the copy official. There are separate versions for elementary, junior high, and senior high.

If you searched for a "Form 137 sample," you were probably trying to answer one of two questions: what am I supposed to be looking at, or is the copy in my hand complete? This guide answers both by walking through the official form's structure section by section. It deliberately does not present a filled-in specimen — a real one carries a real learner's name, LRN, birthdate, and full academic history, and a made-up one would teach you nothing useful about what a registrar actually checks.

For the request process itself, and what to do if a school is withholding your record, see our main guide to Form 137 and SF10.

First, Work Out Which Version You Are Holding

There is no single Form 137 layout. DepEd renamed the Permanent Record to School Form 10 and issued three variants, and older learners finished school on the pre-renaming format.

The standardised SF10 was adopted for Grades 1 and 7 effective SY 2017-2018. If a record covers a learner who was in, say, Grade 4 that year, expect the older layout for the remaining elementary years — that is correct, not a defect.

The elementary template was then revised again for the MATATAG curriculum. The SF10-ES currently distributed through the Learner Information System support site is labelled "Revised 2025 based on DepEd Order No. 10, s. 2024" — the policy guidelines for MATATAG — and its learning-area rows now read Language, Reading and Literacy, Mathematics, GMRC, Makabansa, Music & Arts, Physical Education & Health, and EPP/TLE, in place of the older Filipino, English, Science, Araling Panlipunan, and MAPEH set. The junior high template still carries the older learning areas, so a file spanning both levels will not show the same subject list throughout. That is a curriculum change, not an error in the record.

Kindergarten is a separate case: learners in the Kindergarten program use the ECCD checklist rather than Form 137 or SF10-ES, under DepEd Order No. 47, s. 2016 and the since-repealed DepEd Order No. 8, s. 2015. DepEd Order No. 015, s. 2026 now moves Kindergarten and the early grades to descriptive rather than numeric reporting in stages, so check the current template with your school before assuming what a recent Kindergarten record should look like.

Section 1: The Learner's Personal Information Block

This sits across the top of the form and is filled in first. The fields are deliberately minimal, because the whole point of the 2017 revision was to strip the form down to data that is necessary and permanent.

• Last Name, First Name, Name Extension, Middle Name. Recorded to match the PSA birth certificate. The name-order convention matters here: DepEd's school forms print names as last name, first name, name extension, middle name, and beginning SY 2018-2019 the arrangement of names on the report card was aligned to how it is generated in SF5.
• Learner Reference Number (LRN). The twelve-digit number assigned once and kept for life. It is the single fastest way for a registrar to find a record, and the field most worth checking for a typo. Our LRN guide covers how to recover one.
• Birthdate and Sex.

A mismatch between this block and the PSA birth certificate is the most common reason a receiving school bounces a record back, so this is the first thing to read, not the last.

Section 2: The Credential That Made the Learner Eligible

Just below the personal information block, the form records the documentary basis for the learner's admission — what DepEd calls eligibility for enrolment. On the junior high version this is the credential presented for Grade 7, and there is a field for other credentials presented where a learner enters at another grade level.

The point of the field is that not everyone enters Grade 7 straight out of Grade 6. Eligibility can rest on being an elementary school completer, on passing the Philippine Educational Placement Test, on passing the Alternative Learning System Accreditation and Equivalency test, or on other credentials DepEd recognises. If this field is blank on a record where the learner did not follow the standard route, that is a real gap and the receiving school will ask about it.

What the block asks for changes by level. The elementary form records the credential presented for Grade 1, with tick boxes for a Kindergarten Certificate of Completion or another credential. The junior high form records elementary school completer, naming the elementary school and the general average. The senior high form offers junior high school completer, high school completer for graduates of the pre-K-12 curriculum, PEPT passer, or ALS A&E passer.

For the placement-test routes the form captures more than a tick. It also records the rating, the date of examination or assessment, and the name and address of the testing centre — so a learner who came in through PEPT or ALS A&E has the evidence for that on the permanent record itself, not just an assigned grade level.

Section 3: The Scholastic Record

This is the body of the form, and it is not one table but a stack of them — one per grade level, with more than six provided on the elementary version so that repeated grade levels and interrupted schooling can be recorded without improvising.

Each grade-level table carries, in its header:

• Name of school, as registered with DepEd and in the LIS/EBEIS
• School ID, the official six-digit identifier
• District, the public schools district
• Division, the Schools Division Office
• Region
• Grade level and school year

And in its body, one row per learning area:

• All learning areas of the curriculum, sorted in the same order as the report card, so the two forms can be checked line against line
• Quarterly ratings, one column per quarter
• A final rating for each learning area
• A general average for the grade level
• Remarks

Four rules govern what belongs in those cells, and they explain most of what looks odd on a real form:

1. Blank means not taught. If a learning area is not offered at that grade level, the quarterly ratings are left blank rather than zeroed or dashed.
2. MAPEH is an average, not a mark. Music, Arts, Physical Education, and Health are each rated, and the MAPEH figure recorded is the average of the four.
3. Asterisked subjects are ALIVE subjects. Arabic Language and Islamic Values Education, taken in schools implementing the Madrasah Education Program under DepEd Order No. 51, s. 2004. Schools outside the program leave them blank.
4. The general average excludes ALIVE. It is the average of the final ratings across the learning areas at that grade level, with ALIVE subjects excluded from the count under DepEd's SF10 preparation guidelines. The computation now sits in DepEd Order No. 015, s. 2026, which provides that the General Average is the average of the final grades in all learning areas taken during the school year, expressed as a whole number, with senior high computing it using each subject's equivalent units. The order that older copies of the form cite for this, DO 8, s. 2015, was repealed.

Two vocabularies appear in the last columns. Against each learning area, Remarks are written as PASSED or FAILED. For the grade level as a whole, the year-end action is recorded as PROMOTED, RETAINED, or REMEDIAL — and that last word is what sends you to the remedial block described below.

The number a parent usually cares about here is the final rating in each subject, and 75 is still the passing mark — now under DepEd Order No. 015, s. 2026, which repealed DepEd Order No. 8, s. 2015 with effect from SY 2026-2027. Under the current order a final grade of 75 or higher means the learner met the minimum standards, and each numerical grade carries a descriptor: 90-100 Advancing, 80-89 Benchmarking and 75-79 Connecting all pass, while 65-74 Developing and 0-64 Emerging fail. Records for earlier school years keep the marks and descriptors that applied at the time. How a raw score becomes that number — and why that is changing — is covered in our DepEd grading system guide.

What the senior high version does differently

The senior high record is organised around semesters rather than school years, and it carries the learner's track and strand, because SHS subjects are not uniform across learners the way elementary and junior high subjects are. Its header adds a Date of SHS Admission and, at the end of the programme, a Date of SHS Graduation and an SHS General Average. Subjects are grouped into Core, Applied, and Specialized, and the record carries an annex listing every subject taken, plus fields for Awards/Honors Received and for subject substitutions, if any. The modified version issued for Strengthened SHS pilot classes under DepEd Memorandum No. 020, s. 2026 restructures this further. DepEd's instruction is narrow: the modified SF10 is for Strengthened SHS classes only, and teachers handling subjects under the existing K to 12 curriculum continue using the SF10-SHS issued through DepEd Order No. 69, s. 2016.

Section 4: The Remedial Classes Block

This section exists so that a learner who fell short in a subject and then made it up has both facts on the permanent record rather than just the first one.

DepEd's guidelines say it records the subjects in which the learner did not meet expectations, with the final rating indicated, the dates the remedial classes were conducted, the remedial class mark, and the recomputed final grade. A Certificate of Recomputed Final Grade, noted by the school head, should be attached to the form.

If you are looking at a record with a below-75 final rating and no remedial entry and no attached certificate, that is the gap to ask the registrar about before the record goes anywhere.

Section 5: The Certification Block, the Signature, and the Dry Seal

This is the part that turns a printed sheet into a document.

The certification is accomplished when the learner completes the level and is eligible to move up — Grade 6 to junior high, for instance — or when the learner transfers out. It names the school and school ID the learner is coming from, and it attests that the record is accurate and the learner is eligible for admission to the next grade level. The elementary and junior high templates print the sentence for the school head to complete:

"I CERTIFY that this is a true record of ______ with LRN ______ and that he/she is eligible for admission to Grade ______."

Around it sit the last school year attended, the school name and school ID, the date, the signature of the principal or school head over their printed name, and a space marked "(Affix School Seal here)." Multi-page records are numbered "Page __ of __", and where a learner has transferred more than once, an additional page or certification box may be printed rather than crammed in.

Two physical requirements do the authenticating work:

• The school head's signature in ink. Not a scan, not a stamp.
• The school dry seal, affixed in the certification box to make the form authentic and official.

The same signature-in-ink rule covers corrections: any erasure or alteration on the document must be validated and bear the school head's signature in ink. An unexplained correction with no signature beside it is a defect a receiving registrar is entitled to reject.

The note the form prints about copies

The senior high template prints DepEd's own rule on copies, and it settles several arguments at once:

"This permanent record or a photocopy of this permanent record that bears the seal of the school and the original signature in ink of the School Head shall be considered valid for all legal purposes. Any erasure or alteration made on this copy should be validated by the School Head. If the student transfers to another school, the originating school should produce one (1) certified true copy of this permanent record for safekeeping. The receiving school shall continue filling up the original form. Upon graduation, the school from which the student graduated should keep the original form and produce one (1) certified true copy for the Division Office."

Three things follow from that. A photocopy is valid, as long as it carries the school seal and a wet signature from the school head — so a registrar handing you a sealed, signed photocopy is not fobbing you off. The original travels with the learner on transfer while the old school keeps a certified copy, which is why a school you left in Grade 8 cannot produce "the original" years later; the school you graduated from holds it, and the Division Office holds a certified copy of that. And because any correction has to be validated by the school head, a registrar who will not let you write on the form is following the form, not being difficult.

Practical Format Rules Worth Knowing

• Legal-size bond paper. DepEd's guidelines specify ordinary legal-size bond paper and explicitly discourage commercial printing that results in unnecessary expense.
• Only the official DepEd logo and seal are printed on the form. The 2017 revision removed school-customised headers precisely so that a transferring learner's file would stop being a stack of mismatched school-branded sheets.
• One original moves; the school keeps a certified true photocopy. When a learner transfers, the originating school creates one certified true photocopy for its file and sends the original along with the other documents to the receiving school.
• The learner does not carry it. DepEd Order No. 54, s. 2016 states that learners and parents are not allowed to hand-carry the permanent record.
• Copies for other purposes are certified true copies. If you need a copy for employment or any reason other than enrolling at the next level, the school issues a certified true copy carrying the school seal and the school head's signature in ink.
• The forms are free. DepEd Order No. 69, s. 2016 cautions against buying these tools, and DepEd Memorandum No. 020, s. 2026 repeats the warning for the modified senior high version.

A Quick Check Before You Submit a Copy

Run through this list against the copy in your hand:

1. Does the name match the PSA birth certificate exactly, including the name extension?
2. Is the LRN present and twelve digits?
3. Does every grade level the learner attended have its own table, with school name and school ID filled in?
4. Are the blanks explainable — subjects not taught, or ALIVE subjects at a non-Madrasah school — rather than simply missing quarters?
5. Is there a final rating and a general average for each completed grade level?
6. If any subject is below 75, is there a matching remedial entry or an attached Certificate of Recomputed Final Grade?
7. Is the certification block filled in, signed by the school head in ink, and dry-sealed?
8. Is every correction initialled or signed by the school head in ink?

Anything that fails is a question for the registrar, not something to fix yourself. The form is a school-prepared document, and a learner or parent altering it is a far bigger problem than a blank field.

Form 137 Is Not the Report Card

The single most frequent mix-up is between this document and the report card parents actually receive several times a year. They are different forms with different purposes, and asking for the wrong one is what sends people back to the registrar a second time. The comparison is laid out in Form 137 vs Form 138, and the report card itself is covered in our SF9 guide. For the full SF1 to SF10 set, see the DepEd school forms guide.

Disclaimer: DepEd revises its school forms and their preparation guidelines through new orders and memoranda. Confirm the current version and requirements with your school's registrar or the nearest DepEd Schools Division Office.

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Sources

• TeacherPH — 2019 DepEd Guidelines in the Preparation of School Form 10 for Elementary (SF10-ES)
• TeacherPH — 2019 DepEd Guidelines in the Preparation of School Form 10 for Junior High School (SF10-JHS)
• TeacherPH — School Form 10 Learner's Permanent Academic Record for Junior High School (SF10-JHS)
• DepEd — DO 69, s. 2016, Provision of the DepEd Electronic Class Record and Form 137 for Senior High School
• DepEd — DM 020, s. 2026, Modified Electronic Class Record and School Form 10 for Strengthened Senior High School Pilot Implementers in SY 2025-2026
• TeacherPH — DepEd Order No. 54, s. 2016, Guidelines on the Request and Transfer of Learners' School Records
• DepEd Order No. 015, s. 2026 — Revised Guidelines on Classroom Assessment, Grading System, and Awards and Recognition for the K to 12 Basic Education Program, the current basis for the passing mark and general average (official PDF)
• TeacherPH — DepEd Order No. 8, s. 2015, Policy Guidelines on Classroom Assessment for the K to 12 Basic Education Program (repealed by DO 015, s. 2026)
• SlideShare — DepEd Order No. 11, s. 2018, Guidelines on the Preparation and Checking of School Forms
• DepEd LIS Support — official School Form 10 templates for elementary, junior high and senior high (SF10-ES, SF10-JHS, SF10-SHS)
• DepEd Order No. 010, s. 2024 — Policy Guidelines on the Implementation of the MATATAG Curriculum, the basis of the revised SF10-ES template (official PDF)
• SchoolFinderPH — Form 137 (SF10): What It Is and How to Request It