1.  The annual activities of the Department start this school year with the distribution, collection and processing of the revised unified data gathering forms, which essentially generate basic school data. The forms are enhanced and modified to keep abreast with the current demands for basic education data.

2.  The unified data gathering forms covering SY 2002-2003 shall consist of the following:

2.1  Public Elementary School Profile

2.2  Public Secondary School Profile

2.3  Unified School Profile (for private elementary and secondary schools)

3.  The data gathering instruments are designed for electronic data processing. The Office of Planning Service (OPS) has undertaken the design and revision of these forms and the development of the computer program to process the data.

4.  The heads of the regional and divisional planning units shall jointly undertake the distribution, collection and processing of the accomplished forms.

5.  Schools division superintendents, vocational school, administrators, secondary school principals, district supervisors and heads of elementary schools arc held responsible and accountable for the prompt, complete and accurate filling up of the data gathering forms and the timely submission of the same.

6.  Heads of public elementary and secondary schools and private schools offering elementary and/or secondary education shall submit the duly accomplished school profiles to their respective division offices, on or before the 30^th of September 2002.

7.  The division offices shall electronically process the elementary and secondary school profiles and the unified school profiles to produce school district and school division statistical bulletins. The outputs, in hard copies and diskettes, shall be submitted to their respective regional offices on or before the last day of December 2002.

8.  The regional offices shall consolidate the division offices outputs to produce regional statistical bulletins. The regional statistical bulletins as well as the school district and division statistical bulletins produced by the division offices shall be submitted to OPS, in hard copies and diskettes, on or before the end of January 2003. OPS shall then consolidate the regional outputs to produce the Department’s statistical bulletin, on or before the end of March 2003.

9.  Statistical bulletins produced by the regional offices. Shall be distributed to their respective division offices while those produced by the division offices shall be distributed to their respective district offices.

10.  The regional directors and schools division superintendents are advised to implement rigid data control and verification procedures to ensure the completeness, accuracy and reliability of the data.

11.  Full attention and strict compliance with this Order is earnestly requested of all concerned to ensure the successful implementation of this annual statistical activity.

12.  This Order supersedes previous DECS Order regarding annual collection and processing of basic education data.