Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Schools program in the Philippines has improved significantly over the past years of implementation and contributed to the health and well-being of school children. The program started in 2016 through the DepEd Order No. 10 S-2016 titled “Policy and Guidelines for the Comprehensive WASH in Schools (WinS) Program”. This policy has able to set specific parameters and standards for schools and learning centers all over the country to achieve the basic services for WASH in Schools and to reach the
nationally defined WinS standards.

DepEd adopted the Three Star Approach (TSA), a stepwise approach supporting the schools to reach the national standards for WinS. This approach, that includes country-specific national priorities, benchmarks and and methods for rewarding achievements, has also been used by other countries. To realize this, DepEd has developed implementation guidelines, capacity development tools such as the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for WinS, a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework and system for rewarding and incentives.

This program has also been contributing to the global target that all schools nationwide have available basic WASH services. This global target is part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4 – to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and to promote lifelong learning.

Recently, in 2022, DepEd committed itself to the realization of the healthy learning institutions (HLIs) as envisioned in the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act in 2019. This groundbreaking HLIs initiative of DepEd, in collaboration with Department of Health and other concerned government agencies, is set to transform schools to healthy places nationwide by prioritizing well-being and health of learners as well as teachers and non-teaching personnel. Under this initiative schools will have to comply with a comprehensive set of standards with a comprehensive set of standards including WASH.

This report provides overview of WASH in Schools implementation in the Philippines over the past five years of implementation. This examines specifically specific indicators that have shown substantial improvement and identifies areas with existing gaps that need attention and specific interventions.

Bibliographic information

Department of Education Philippines (2023). WinS Monitoring Results - School year 2017/2018 to school year 2021/2022 Department of Education Philippines

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Sustainable WASH in institutions and gender equality (WG7)SchoolsEducatorsPoliticians and local decision makersPractitionersEnglish

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