Implementation of Senior High School-Technical Vocational Livelihood (SHS-TVL) track in public schools of Region XI: A multiple case study

This study examined the implementation of the Senior High School Technical-Vocational-Livelihood (SHS-TVL) Track in public schools, focusing on the implementation practices, challenges encountered, and strategies employed to address these challenges across four strands: Agricultural and Fishery Arts (AFA), Home Economics (HE), Industrial Arts (IA), and Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Using a multiple-case study design, data were collected to provide an in-depth understanding of how SHS-TVL programs are operationalized in diverse school contexts. Findings revealed that implementation is largely anchored on competency-based, experiential, and performance-oriented learning approaches, supported by curriculum alignment with the standards of the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), continuous teacher development, stakeholder engagement, and industry partnerships for work immersion. However, the study also identified persistent and interrelated challenges affecting implementation, including curriculum misalignment between DepEd and TESDA requirements, shortages of qualified and certified teachers, inadequate and outdated facilities and equipment, limited access to tools and consumables, restricted immersion opportunities due to limited industry partners, socioeconomic constraints affecting learners’ participation and retention, and difficulties in managing large and uneven student populations across specializations. In response to these challenges, school heads demonstrated adaptive and context-responsive leadership by implementing strategies such as strengthening teacher competence through training and certification, maximizing and managing limited resources through planning, cost-sharing, and scheduling, expanding stakeholder and industry linkages to support immersion and resource needs, improving learner distribution through guidance and administrative adjustments, and enhancing planning, monitoring, and supervision systems to ensure continuous program improvement. Guided by Najam’s 5C framework content, context, commitment, capacity, and clients the findings indicate that SHS-TVL implementation is a context-sensitive and capacity-driven process, where capacity and context emerge as the most critical determinants of successful implementation. The study further reveals that while schools exhibit strong adaptive capacity and innovation in sustaining program delivery, implementation remains uneven and dependent on local conditions, highlighting the need for stronger system-level support, improved resource allocation, enhanced curriculum alignment, and more effective coordination among DepEd, TESDA, industry partners, and other stakeholders to ensure equitable, sustainable, and high-quality implementation of the SHS-TVL Track in public schools.