MATATAG Curriculum Guide PDF SY 2025-2026 (Complete CG) DepEd

The MATATAG Curriculum: Forging a Stronger, Leaner, and More Resilient Philippine Education

For over a decade, the K to 12 program stood as a monumental pillar in the Philippine educational landscape, designed to bring the nation’s learners to a global standard. Yet, in the crucible of the classroom, its ambitious framework revealed significant stresses. Teachers navigated an overcrowded curriculum, where depth was often sacrificed for breadth. Misaligned competencies created gaps in learning, while the imbalanced cognitive demands left both students and educators striving for a focus that was just out of reach.

It was a system with immense potential, in need of refinement. A system ready for its next evolution.

Enter the MATATAG Curriculum—the Department of Education’s (DepEd) powerful and deliberate response to build a truly resilient and responsive educational foundation for the Filipino learner.

The Phoenix from the K to 12 Flame: Why “MATATAG”?

The name itself is a declaration of intent. “Matatag” translates to steadfast, firm, and resilient. This isn’t a mere revision; it’s a strategic recalibration designed to confront the core challenges head-on. The new curriculum is engineered to be:

• Leaner: By decongesting the overwhelming number of learning competencies, the MATATAG Curriculum makes room for mastery. It’s about learning more by focusing on less, but going deeper.
• More Relevant: With a sharp focus on essential skills like literacy, numeracy, and socio-emotional competencies, it ensures that every lesson has a clear purpose in a student’s life and future.
• Resilient: By creating a more balanced and achievable framework, it builds a system—and learners—who can withstand pressure and adapt to a changing world.

This transformative vision is now codified in the Updated MATATAG Curriculum Guide (CG) PDF for All Subjects. These guides are the new blueprint for Philippine education, containing the refined set of competencies that will shape the lessons in every classroom, ensuring a unified and purposeful direction for the nation’s schools.

The MATATAG Roadmap: A Strategic, Staggered Ascent

Recognizing the immense logistical undertaking of a national curriculum shift, DepEd has orchestrated a deliberate and phased implementation. This careful timeline ensures a smooth transition, allowing for proper training, resource allocation, and continuous refinement.

Mark your calendars for this educational transformation:

• SY 2024-2025: The Foundation Lays
  The journey begins with our youngest learners. The MATATAG Curriculum will be launched in Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 4, and Grade 7.
• SY 2025-2026: The Structure Rises
  Building on the foundation, the curriculum expands to Grades 2, 5, and 8.
• SY 2026-2027: Nearing the Summit
  The rollout continues with Grades 6, 9, and 10, bringing the new approach to the cusp of senior high school.
• The Senior High School Frontier
  The policy guidelines for the crucial Grades 11 and 12 will be charted in a separate, forthcoming issuance from DepEd, signaling a tailored approach for the specialized tracks of senior high.

This phased approach is a masterstroke in change management, ensuring that no grade level is left behind and that the system learns and adapts as it grows.

A New Dawn for the Filipino Classroom

The MATATAG Curriculum is more than a new set of lesson plans; it is a promise. A promise of a learning environment where teachers are empowered to teach deeply, not broadly. Where students are not rushed through a checklist of topics but are given the time to understand, apply, and create. It is a commitment to building not just academically proficient individuals, but critical thinkers, problem-solvers, and steadfast citizens.

The blueprint is published. The timeline is set. The journey to a stronger, more focused, and truly MATATAG Philippine education has begun.

For complete and official details, educators and stakeholders are encouraged to read the foundational document: DepEd Order No. 10, S. 2024.

MATATAG Curriculum Guide: Subjects/Learning Areas

Every great structure requires a meticulous blueprint—a plan that ensures every beam and bolt is placed with purpose, strength, and a vision for the future. The Philippine educational landscape is undergoing precisely such a reconstruction, moving from a crowded foundation to a resilient, purpose-built edifice for learning. The MATATAG Curriculum Guide organizes subjects and learning areas according to students’ developmental stages, ensuring that the level of cognitive challenge matches their age and preparedness. It emphasizes a progressive structure where advanced skills are gradually developed from a strong base of fundamental abilities.

This is the essence of the MATATAG Curriculum: a master plan that aligns the “what” and “when” of teaching with the “who”—the developing mind of the Filipino child. It’s a curriculum engineered not just to inform, but to form, building more complex skills upon an unshakable foundation of basics. Let’s explore the architectural plans for the crucial early years.

The Foundation Phase: Key Stage 1 — Where Everything Begins

This stage is the bedrock of a lifetime of learning. Here, the MATATAG Curriculum is meticulously calibrated to nurture the whole child, ensuring that cognitive growth is balanced with character, creativity, and well-being.

Kindergarten: The Groundwork of a Human Being

Before letters and numbers come the essential qualities of a person. Kindergarten in the MATATAG framework is a holistic garden where six key developmental domains are tenderly cultivated:

• Socio-emotional Development: Learning to navigate relationships and understand emotions.
• Values Development: Planting the seeds of integrity, empathy, and respect.
• Aesthetic/Creative Development: Unleashing imagination and appreciating beauty.
• Physical Health and Motor Development: Honing the body and its coordination.
• Language, Literacy and Communication Development: Building the first blocks of expression.
• Cognitive Development: Awakening curiosity and problem-solving skills.

This is not mere preparation for Grade 1; it is the crucial formation of the learner as a complete individual.

Grade 1: The Cornerstones are Laid

With a solid holistic foundation, the academic structure begins to rise with five focused learning areas:

1. Language, Reading and Literacy: The primary tool for all future learning is established here, merging oral language with the magical code of reading.
2. Mathematics: Logical thinking and numerical sense are introduced as a language to understand the world.
3. Good Manners and Right Conduct (GMRC): Character education remains central, formally instilling the values that build a harmonious society.
4. Makabansa: A love for country and national identity is consciously nurtured from the very start.

Notice the intentional focus: literacy, numeracy, and character. The curriculum is lean, mean, and purposeful.

Grade 2: Strengthening the Pillars

The structure gains strength and definition. The learning areas remain five, but with a significant, strategic shift:

• Filipino and English now appear as distinct learning areas, allowing for dedicated and deeper development of both national and global languages.
• Mathematics, GMRC, and Makabansa continue to build upon the first-grade foundation, increasing in complexity in step with the child’s developing abilities.

This is the systematic build the MATATAG promise speaks of—skills are not repeated, but elevated.

Grade 3: Expanding the Horizon

With the core pillars firmly in place, the academic horizon expands to introduce a pivotal discipline:

• Science joins Filipino, English, Mathematics, GMRC, and Makabansa.

This is no random addition. By Grade 3, students have the necessary literacy and numeracy skills to begin exploring the world systematically. Science becomes a natural extension of their curiosity, now guided by the scientific method. The cognitive demand is perfectly timed to the learners’ readiness.

A Design for Mastery, Not Mileage

The brilliance of the MATATAG Curriculum in Key Stage 1 is its rejection of overcrowding in favor of depth. It understands that a skyscraper cannot be built on a weak base. By focusing on fewer, more critical learning areas and sequencing them in a developmentally appropriate way, it ensures that every Filipino child doesn’t just pass through school—they grow, they master, and they thrive.

This is more than a new set of subjects; it’s a new philosophy of learning. It’s the promise of a MATATAG generation, built from the ground up.

The MATATAG Ascent: Forging Scholars, Citizens, and Visionaries in the Critical Middle Years

Every great architectural marvel is defined not just by its foundation, but by the strength and purpose of its ascending levels. In the grand design of the MATATAG Curriculum, the foundational work of Key Stage 1 gives way to the critical construction phases of Key Stages 2 and 3. Here, the Filipino learner evolves from a foundational reader and thinker into a capable scholar, an engaged citizen, and an innovative problem-solver.

This phase of the educational journey is where the curriculum’s promise of a “systematic build” truly comes to life, adding layers of knowledge and complex skill sets with deliberate precision.

Key Stage 2 (Grades 4-6): The Intellectual Expansion

If Key Stage 1 was about laying the cornerstone of literacy, numeracy, and character, then Key Stage 2 is about constructing the full breadth of the intellectual edifice. The learning areas expand strategically to encompass the full spectrum of human knowledge and practical skill.

Students in Grades 4 to 6 engage with a rich and diverse suite of subjects:

• Filipino & English: Mastery of language deepens, transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn. Communication becomes more analytical and expressive.
• Mathematics: Concepts evolve into more abstract reasoning, forming the bedrock for logical analysis and scientific thought.
• Science: Now a established discipline, it shifts from discovery to investigation, nurturing a methodical and inquisitive mindset.
• Araling Panlipunan: The student’s world expands from the local to the national and global, fostering a deeper sense of history, geography, and civic identity.
• MAPEH (Music & Arts, PE & Health): These areas cultivate aesthetic appreciation, physical well-being, and holistic health—essential components of a balanced life.
• GMRC: Values education remains a steady compass, guiding ethical decision-making as social interactions become more complex.
• EPP/TLE (Edukasyong Pantahanan at Pangkabuhayan/Technology & Livelihood Education): This is a critical addition. Here, theory meets practice. Students are introduced to the fundamentals of technology, entrepreneurship, and livelihood skills, planting the seeds for future vocational choices and practical life competence.

This stage is a carefully orchestrated symphony of knowledge, ensuring the learner is not just academically proficient but also culturally aware, physically sound, and practically capable.

Key Stage 3 (JHS Grades 7-10): The Specialized Integration

Junior High School represents the culmination of basic education—the point where the fully formed structure is tested, refined, and prepared for its purpose. The curriculum consolidates into eight core learning areas, each studied with depth and consistency over an entire academic year.

The offerings are streamlined for focused mastery:

• Filipino, English, Mathematics, Science, Araling Panlipunan, MAPEH, TLE, and Values Education.

The shift in terminology from GMRC to Values Education is significant. It reflects the learner’s maturation; the focus moves from manners to a more profound, internalized moral and ethical framework. Similarly, TLE evolves from EPP, offering more specialized and advanced technological and livelihood skills that directly interface with real-world applications and potential senior high school tracks.

The Engine of Clarity: The Curriculum Guide Blueprint

Underpinning every lesson, every quarter, and every grade level in this intricate structure is the Curriculum Guide (CG). This document is the ultimate blueprint, ensuring every educator is building in unison toward the same grand vision.

Each CG provides a crystal-clear framework:

• Program & Learning Area Standards: The “why” – the overarching goal for the entire subject.
• Course Description: The “what” – a concise summary of the learning journey.
• Key Stage & Grade-Level Standards: The “when” – defining what a student must know and be able to do at each critical juncture.
• Content & Performance Standards: The “how well” – specifying the knowledge to be acquired and the competencies to be demonstrated, quarter by quarter.

This meticulous level of detail transforms the curriculum from a lofty ideal into a actionable, measurable, and achievable plan. It guarantees that a Grade 7 student in Luzon and a Grade 7 student in Mindanao are building the same cognitive and skill-based structures, fortified by the same values.

The MATATAG Curriculum is not a mere list of subjects; it is a deliberate, stage-by-stage architectural program for the Filipino mind. From the holistic grounds of Kindergarten to the specialized heights of Junior High, it forges a learner who is not only prepared for the next grade but is MATATAG—steadfast, resilient, and ready to build the future.

Download MATATAG Curriculum Guide PDF (All Subjects)

The DepEd MATATAG Curriculum Guide (CG) PDF serves as a key reference for teachers in planning classroom instruction. It helps educators align their lesson plans with the required content and performance standards, suitable learning competencies, teaching strategies, assessments, and resources needed to meet the targeted learning outcomes for Filipino students. The updated 2025 MATATAG Curriculum Guide PDF can be downloaded for free from the official Department of Education website or this site.