To strengthen its recruitment process and increase personnel quality and retention, the Department of Education (DepEd) has set up a competency-based Merit Selection Plan (MSP).
The agency issued DepEd Order No. 019, s. 2022 which will serve as a guide in the selection, hiring, appointment, and promotion of individuals in the teaching, school administration, related teaching, and non-teaching positions in all DepEd offices and schools.
Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones said that the issuance of the Merit Selection Plan is “one of many interventions of the Department to improve the human resource policies and processes to better serve our learners and stakeholders.”
The creation of the MSP, DepEd said, adheres to the principles of merit, competence, fitness, accountability, transparency, and equal opportunity. “With this policy in place, we can ensure that we get and retain the right people for the right jobs in DepEd,” Briones explained.
The MSP, DepEd said, aligns and contextualizes its internal system on application, evaluation, selection, and appointment with the provisions of the Civil Service Commission (CSC)’s Omnibus Rules on Appointments and Other Human Resource Actions (ORAOHRA).
In the issued DepEd Order, the agency explained that the MSP is aimed at ensuring that the organization and its manpower can “respond to challenges and opportunities of the 21st century with a focus on the delivery of quality, accessible, relevant, and liberating basic education.”
The MSP, DepEd added, also provides for a systematic method of selecting employees for appointment to first and second level positions, including second-level executive/managerial positions, and covers all teaching, school administration, related teaching, and non-teaching positions in the Central Office (CO), Regional Offices (ROs), Schools Division Offices (SDOs), and Schools.
The applicants, DepEd said, will be assessed based on their “competency, performance or prior work experience, outstanding accomplishments, education, learning and development interventions, potential, behavioral events interview, and other appropriate evaluative assessments.”
DepEd also adopted an Open Ranking System in the comparative assessment process, where applicants will witness an actual evaluation of scores of all applicants present to further strengthen transparency.
DepEd noted that a performance rating of at least Very Satisfactory (VS) in the last rating period before the date of assessment or screening is necessary for applicants for promotion or transfer, except for those vying for promotion to second-level entry positions.
“To promote transparency and equal opportunity, all vacant positions in DepEd needed to be filled, including vacant executive/managerial positions in the second and third levels, their corresponding qualification standards, and plantilla item numbers, will be posted on the CSC, DepEd websites, newspaper, social media, job search websites, and job fairs to reach a wider range of applicants,” the department said.
DepEd explained that the implementation of the new MSP shall commence on Sept. 01, 2022, to allow “ample time for the adoption of the transitory measures that ensure proper and effective implementation of the policy such as issuance of operational guidelines and capability building” of HR implementers.
Based on DepEd Memorandum No. 041, s. 2022, all vacant positions that are published and posted before Sept. 1, 2022 --- including all ongoing recruitment, selection, and appointment action --- shall “continue to be governed by existing policies and guidelines.”