Term 2 under a three-term calendar: what actually changes for the registrar
Three weeks into Term 2, most registrar's offices have noticed the same thing. Term 1 under the DepEd three-term calendar closed, progress reports went out, and it felt manageable. Term 2 is where the questions start: how the first term carries into the second, which report card template applies, and what the cumulative record should show when there are three grading periods instead of four.
Term 2 classes run from 16 September to 4 December, with the end-of-term block from 7 to 18 December. That leaves about eight weeks to settle the questions below before deliberation and clearance arrive alongside the Christmas break. This is a working checklist for the registrar who has to make the answers hold.
For reference: DepEd Order 009, s. 2026, issued on 16 April 2026, set the DepEd three-term calendar for school year 2026-2027. It covers public schools from kindergarten to Grade 12.Â
Private schools may adopt it, provided they keep the required number of class days, so private schools are not all in the same place. Some moved every level onto three terms.Â
Some moved part of the school. Some stayed on quarters. If your school runs more than one arrangement, most of what follows applies twice.
Why the second block is harder than the first
Term 1 had one advantage: nothing came before it. The grading sheets were new, the term dates were new, and every computation started from zero.
Term 2 is the first time a term has to build on another one. The Term 1 grade is now an input, not a result. Any decision taken quickly in September, such as how a late submission was handled, how a transmuted grade was rounded, or which template printed the progress report, is now inherited by every computation that uses it.
It is also the term where people stop checking. In Term 1, advisers and coordinators looked at every number because the DepEd three-term calendar was unfamiliar. By Term 2 the process feels routine, and errors that would have been caught in August pass straight through to the report card.
Guardians start comparing in Term 2 as well. A parent with one child in a level on terms and another on quarters will ask why the two cards look different, and that question comes to the registrar's counter.
And the timing is tighter. The end-of-term block runs into mid-December, so grade encoding, deliberation and clearance compete with Christmas programmes and staff leave. Anything left for the end-of-term block is being left for the busiest fortnight of the year.
Grading periods that no longer divide evenly
Most grading setups in Philippine basic education were built around four quarters, and senior high around two semesters of two quarters each. Four divides into halves. Three does not.
That matters wherever a computation assumed halves. Under the DepEd three-term calendar, a final grade that was the average of four quarterly grades is now the average of three, or a weighted combination of three, depending on what your school has adopted. A senior high subject that ran for one semester of two quarters now has to be mapped onto terms, and that mapping is a policy decision, not a software setting.
Three-term grading also changed the assessment rhythm inside each term. Under DepEd Order 009, each term carries two teacher-made summative assessments before the term examination, with a progress report after each term. If your grading sheets still carry columns for four quarterly assessments, the sheet and the policy disagree, and faculty will fill in whichever one is in front of them.
Before Term 2 grades are encoded, confirm in writing:
How the term grade is computed, and whether it matches the assessment rhythm the order sets out.
How the final grade is computed from three terms, and who approved that rule.
How senior high subjects map onto terms, if your senior high moved to the DepEd three-term calendar.
Report card templates built for four quarters
The report card is where a grading decision becomes visible to a guardian. A template built for four quarters and printed under the DepEd three-term calendar will show an empty fourth column or, worse, a final grade computed as if the fourth column were zero.
Check three things in your template before Term 2 progress reports print:
The number of grading period columns, and their labels. "Term 2" and "2nd Quarter" are not interchangeable to a parent reading the card.
Where the final grade appears, and that it stays blank until Term 3 closes.
The attendance and values sections, which are often laid out by month or by quarter and are easy to overlook.
If your school updated its SF9 layout for three-term grading during Term 1, check that the file used for Term 2 is the same version, not an older copy saved on someone's desktop.
Cumulative records and the computation problem
The cumulative record is the hardest part of the move to the DepEd three-term calendar, because it outlives the school year. Whatever goes into it for school year 2026-2027 will be read by another registrar, at another school, years from now.
3 cases need a rule before Term 2 closes.
Transferees. A student who arrives mid-year from a school still on quarters brings grades for periods that do not match yours. Decide how a first and second quarter grade maps onto your Term 1 and Term 2, document it, and apply it the same way to every transferee. The reverse matters too: a student who leaves after Term 2 needs a record that a school on quarters can read.
Mixed levels. If only part of your school moved to the DepEd three-term calendar, the cumulative record template has to handle both arrangements, and the general average computation has to know which rule applies to which learner.
Honours and ranking. Any ranking that averaged four quarters now averages three. If the rule changed, the people who will be asked about it on recognition day should know before deliberation, not during it.
Each of these is a short meeting in October. Left until December, each becomes a long one.
A checklist for the week before Term 2 closes
Term 2 classes end on 4 December. In the week before, the registrar's office should be able to tick every line below.
Term 1 grades are final, approved and locked, with no open adjustments.
Every Term 2 score sheet has been submitted, and the missing ones are listed by adviser and section.
The term grade and final grade rules are written down and match what the grading sheets compute.
The report card template has been printed once with test data and checked by someone outside the registrar's office.
Transferee grade mappings are documented and applied the same way to every case.
Clearance holds are reconciled with finance, so the queue at the counter during the end-of-term block stays short.
Deliberation dates are fixed and every adviser knows them.
Guardians have been told in writing what the Term 2 progress report will and will not show.
Where Edusuite K12Â helps: term start and end dates are set per term in School Year Setup, and once students are enrolled the term setup is protected from changes that would break existing records. Score sheets can pass through a grades approval workflow with reviewers set per grade level, so the office can see which sheets are still pending instead of chasing them by message. Rounding and decimal places for report card and master grading sheet computations are configurable, which is where many computation disagreements start.
Next school year the DepEd three-term calendar will no longer be new, and the offices that write their rules down this term will spend that year applying them rather than rediscovering them. For how grading is set up end to end, read the K12 grading overview.
The three-term calendar changed how grades are computed, not only when, and Term 2 is when a school finds out whether its rules hold.
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