Review of CHED policies, standards, and guidelines (PSGs) pre- and post-K to 12 reforms

In the decade from 2012 to 2021, Philippine higher education experienced three major reforms: the adoption of an outcomes-based typology for programs and institutions, the establishment of the Philippine Qualifications Framework (PQF) setting competency standards, pathways, and equivalencies, and of course K to 12 legislation, which added two years to the country's basic education cycle. Have these resulted in improvements to the minimum standards embodied in CHED Policies, Standards, and Guidelines (PSGs) formulated by independent Technical Panels? This study addresses the issue by taking current PSGs from the ten most-subscribed programs and examining the quality of their learning outcomes and performance indicators, using criteria shared by many global quality assurance bodies. It then compares curriculum designs (total credits, proportion of general education and professional courses, internships) to benchmarks from Australia, the EU and ASEAN. Lastly it consolidates the findings from key informant interviews with six Technical Panel chairs and identifies good practices that may be shared as well as forms of CHED support most urgently needed. The emergent picture is that of overall improvement in the adoption of outcomes-based principles in designing curricula, but with a high degree of heterogeneity both within and across programs. Quality practices such as the use of verbs from Bloom's Taxonomy, and the preference for more so-called authentic assessment are evident in every set of PSGs, but could still be applied much more consistently. On curriculum design (total credits plus distribution of course types), the uniform finding is that general education courses were reduced, but promptly replaced by professional courses, resulting in overall academic loads that are significantly higher than benchmarks from Australia, the EU and ASEAN. Finally, while a few Technical Panels have been able to produce much improved, even exemplary sets of PSGs, strategic clarity and organizational support from CHED are urgently needed for the quality assurance cycle to function effectively.