Frequency of Tardiness and Academic Performance
On Grade Nine Students

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
In Science, Math and English IV

Submitted by:
Dagala, Aaron Christian C.
Elizaga, Maria Isabel A.
Ibag, Bernadine E.
Roslinda, Karl Angelo J.
Soriano, Czashka Rheyshyl

Submitted to:
Mr. Rogelio D. Rasay III MAT-MATH
Ms. Hasmin M. Macatabang MA-Ed
Mr. Arcel Joseph C. Amoguis

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
“Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.”
-Niccolo Machiavelli A significant number of school-age children have television sets in their bedrooms, and a great many probably are watching a late movie or one of the late-night talk shows when they should be sleeping. When and if they have an alarm clock, they just continue to sleep after it goes off. This was according to Murray Light who was asked to make an article regarding the growing concern of tardiness. Enamiroro Oghuvbu conducted a study in Nigeria to determine the causes of absenteeism and tardiness. He cites that the distance to school, school discipline, family background and school location are some of the common causes of for the tardiness of secondary students. Tardiness is a growing problem according to both of them. One’s tardiness, most especially a student’s, might result to low academic performance for he or she has missed a part of a discussion, making him or her unable to grasp the concept of the lesson. Stacy Zeiger, an eHow contributor, provided the results of the study of the U.S. Department of Education on ‘truancy’ which is related to tardiness. The lessons discussed during morning classes, are the most crucial for students are most alert and mindful so when students come late in class, they miss out the possibility of having more knowledge.
According to Rachel Pancare (N.D) who shared information from the National Initiative Attendance Works with her article, another effect of tardiness is increased failure and dropout rates. It was also stated that children who are often late have trouble settling in and mastering routines thus making tardiness throw of their whole morning or even their day thus developing pessimism and building up more stress. Another negative effect of tardiness is the criticisms a student might get if he or she gets late from the teacher and students. This may result to low self esteem which would affect him or her greatly in the future.
These effects of tardiness are our reasons as to why the researchers are conducting this research, with the objective to lessen (if not to fully influence to be punctual) the frequency of tardiness among students. The researchers, furthermore, intend to find out whether the frequency of tardiness of a student can affect their academic performance.
This action research is limited to only the Grade Nine students. With them involved with the K + 12 Program which gives them the choice to either continue their education and pursuing college degree, and to directly find an occupation. With either option, the fact remains that tardiness is strictly prohibited considering that it causes more work to be done or disturbance in the current flow of the discussion in work or in class thus the researchers want them to be the subjects of this action research.
The research will be conducted by the use of a table containing the frequency of tardiness and academic performance of the Grade Nine students that will be obtained from the Registrar’s Office. The relationship as to how the frequency of tardiness to the academic performance of the student will be determined by this table.
Background of the Study The researchers have observed that the tardiness among the Grade Nine Students of the school is increasing. Furthermore, the researchers were enlightened by the other effects of tardiness thus driving them to think of and act on lessening their frequency in being late. With these reasons, the researchers are encouraged to conduct an action research concerning this. The researchers mainly wish if their tardiness affects their academic performance or not at all.

Statement of the Problem
The researchers have observed the frequency of the case of tardiness among the grade nine students of San Pedro College Basic Education Department. This brought them to make our research revolve around these questions: * What is the mean frequency of academic performance? * Is there a significant relationship between academic performance and the frequency of tardiness?
Hypothesis
The researchers infer that there is no significant relationship between the frequency of tardiness and academic performance of the Grade Nine Students. The mental capacity of the student cannot be determined by how frequently he or she is late. Late or not, they’re very likely to adjust to the situation and merely ‘go with the flow’ since the subjects of the study are in a mature age to deal with their environment thus making them able enough to do the necessary activities in the period with no regards to other external factors that would deem them as unable to do so.
Significance of the Study
The researchers conducted this study because of their observation that students, particularly the Grade Nine students from San Pedro College were late in coming to class and in school. This could be observed during the flag ceremony and the Morning Assembly with many students carrying their bags and rushing to come in line. Furthermore, the clearest evidence of tardiness is the long line of cars at 7:00 am and also the complaints of students as they enter the classroom, claiming that the bus was late. Tardiness is not a good practice for a student for it will affect his or her future thus this study is deemed important because it promotes punctuality among the Grade Nine students to aid them in their everyday lives in school especially in coping up with the lessons since tardiness makes things difficult for them. Furthermore, being part of the K +12 Program, the option to choose whether to find a job or pursue a college degree is available. With either option, punctuality in coming to class or work is a necessity.
Scope and Limitations
This action research focuses only on the Grade Nine students. Furthermore, the reasons of the tardiness are sorted to the three factors: habits, transportation and time management. For getting the results, the researchers also would use the frequency of tardiness of the students. Their frequency in tardiness would only include their frequency in going to school late with the frequency in going to class hours after a break disregarded.
The change in academic performance only revolves around the Grade Nine students’ first grading period and second grading period grades.
Lastly, the researchers will only refer to the table containing the academic performance and tardiness records of the Grade Nine students for this action research.

Conceptual Framework FREQUENCY OF
TARDINESS______________________ * Habit * Transportation * Time Management | ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE |

Fig. 1: The diagram above shows the concept of the action research. The frequency of tardiness (the independent variable) has three selected factors: habit, transportation and time management. This is linked to the academic performance (the dependent variable), establishing that these two correlates with each other in the action research.

Theoretical Framework

TIME MANAGEMENT

HABITS

TRANSPORTATIONS

FREQUENCY OF
TARDINESS

ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Fig. 2
The diagram above shows the factors of the frequency of tardiness (time management, habits and transportation) which affects the academic performance of the Grade Nine students.

Definition of Terms
Academic Performance – The First Grading and Second Grading grades of the Grade Nine students provided in the requested table from the Registrar’s office.
Frequency – The numeric data in the total tardiness column in the requested table from the Registrar’s Office. Grade Nine Students – The action research’s respondents. Habits – A cause of the tardiness and is thus equal to the definition of tardiness. Tardiness – The existence of the data in the tardiness column, proving the fact that tardiness is common in students. It is also the tardiness of the respondents in coming to school. Time Management – A cause of the tardiness and is thus equal to the definition of tardiness. Transportation – A cause of the tardiness and is thus equal to the definition of tardiness.

CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES With documents necessary to assist the researchers as they conduct this action research, further research is necessary to answer possible questions and ensure validity. Furthermore, a guide is a necessity as one must be accurate as they gather the important data that would lead to the conclusion of the action research. Below are theories, articles and studies that would enlighten people regarding the research and would serve as pieces of evidence that they conducted the action research properly and efficiently.
RELATED LITERATURE 1. School Tardiness and Absences Can Make a Child Fall Behind According to an article by New York Schools, parents seem to underestimate the importance of getting their child to school on time, thinking that it is better to be late than never. With classroom work starting at the moment the bell rings, it would be difficult if the child, who will miss what may be important information, who isn’t there. Occasional tardiness is not the end of the world but repeated tardiness and absences can make the child fall behind especially if the child is of a young age when learning to read is very important with being late possibly hindering them to develop the skill. This could affect the child’s work in other subject areas as well especially if the topic at hand is similar to a topic discussed earlier. Overall, being absent and tardy is acceptable but should be avoided whenever possible. 2. Reasons Why Being Tardy to School is Bad According to Leyla Norman, author of the article, tardiness affects not only the child’s attendance record and ability learn but also the school environment and the parent. Tardiness can also add up to absences in many schools like at Brier Elementary School in Brier, Washington, after three times of being tardy, it is equal to already one absence. A possible effect of being tardy might result to legal problems for the parent in some places in which the states have laws that require attendance at school. Older students can be arrested for being truant. Another is the child’s learning for being tardy makes him or her miss important instructions. Tardiness forces her to catch up with what other students are doing thus falling behind. Other students can also suffer because once a child is late; they will have to wait with a lesson because the teacher is trying to assist the child in catching up with the lesson or instruction. The interruption of the door opening and asking of permission by the late child from the teacher will destroy the flow of the discussion and also waste time. Finally, being on time prepares the child for the school and if he or she is frequently late, he or she will have problems in dealing with the real world especially when it comes to showing up to job interviews on time. 3. Time Management Theory: Maslow’s Theory According to Abraham Harold Maslow, an American psychology professor, as long as the efficient use of time aid us to meet higher goals of fulfillment, spirituality and well being, we perceive it as helpful. But in the interests of greater efficiency, if we sacrifice bigger things like purpose, meaning and satisfaction with our lives, then it is a moot victory. This theory teaches the importance of matching time management with our other needs. 4. Habit-Related Theory: Einstein’s Theory of Relative Tardiness
Here we have the missing "X" factor that only Einstein could grasp: Why are people who are habitually late unable to start getting ready 20 minutes earlier? The real reason, as laid out by Einstein, is that their internal clocks move more slowly or not at all because of (a) the curvature of the earth and (b) their inability to get off the phone. In extreme cases, such people have no internal clocks at all, don't realize clocks will tell you how much time remains between 3 and 4 o'clock and prefer to operate totally by the seat of their pants.

Incidentally, you cannot speed things up even if you try to be late. The incorrigibly tardy tend to be just a tiny bit later than usual - just to show you who's boss. Experienced, unrepentant procrastinators are born with the pokey chromosome for which there is no known cure. 5. Three-Phase Traffic Theory
Three-phase traffic theory is an alternative theory of traffic flow developed by Boris Kerner between 1996 and 2002. It focuses mainly on the explanation of the physics of traffic breakdown and resulting congested traffic on highways. Kerner’s theory divides congested traffic into two distinct phases, synchronized flow and wide moving jam, bringing the total number of phases to three: 1. Free flow (F) 2. Synchronized flow (S) 3. Wide moving jam (J)
The word "wide" is used even though it is the length of the traffic jam that is being referred to. 6. Effects of Tardiness on your Child’s Education According to the National Initiative Attendance Works, missing just 10 percent of the school year in the early grades causes many students to struggle in elementary school, and lateness in later grades is associated with increased failure and dropout rates. Fortunately, parents can help prevent tardiness from becoming frequent enough to negatively impact their child's school life.
6a. Disrupted Routines
One of the most important aspects of school is that it is organized, scheduled and predictable. Students depend on the structure of the day. They know where they have to be and when. They know the main purpose for being in school is to learn and that routines are in place precisely to help them focus on that learning. When students are repeatedly tardy, these routines are disrupted. Children who are often late have trouble settling in and mastering routines. Tardiness can throw off their whole morning or even their day, especially if the late commute to school was stressful.
6b. Social Criticism
The social experience has a powerful impact on a child's feelings about school and his ability to be academically successful. When a child continuously shows up late to class, other students are distracted. Attention is drawn away from the teacher or assignment and toward the child who has just arrived. Over time, classmates may begin to criticize this child, affecting how he feels about himself in school. During adolescence, children are especially conscious of fitting in and being accepted by peers. If your child is repeatedly tardy, he may become a target or outcast over time, and negative peer interactions can hurt his ability to concentrate on learning.
6c. Low Achievement
PerformWell, a nonprofit policy research and educational organization, reports that frequent tardiness is associated with lower grades and lower scores on standardized tests. It is also linked to low graduation rates. In addition, students who are routinely late at the elementary and middle school levels are more likely to fail in high school -- or even drop out.
6d. Responsibility
Part of your child's education is learning to be responsible. The school experience teaches children how to meet expectations. Learning responsibility in school is a precursor to functioning in the working world, as noted by William Kirby in his 2010 Dayton Daily News article "School Attendance Tied to Academic Success." Attendance is one of the ways children show they can meet their obligations. In many cases, a child's attendance depends on his parents' ability to help him be on time.

7. Traffic Used as Justification for Tardiness
While workers may not go so far as to say they were late for work because of an accident that warranted an auto insurance claim, traffic is the most common excuse they point for arriving tardy at the office.
According to the survey performed by Harris Interactive on behalf of job search engine CareerBuilder, revealed that approximately one in four individuals who work for a living admitted to clocking in at their workplace past the point they were scheduled to be there about once a week, on average. When respondents were asked the most common explanation for not being punctual, traffic was the one they most regularly used, followed by oversleeping, problems with public transportation, inclement weather and child-related responsibilities, such as dropping them off at daycare or school. 8. Time Management Matrix by Stephen Covey – Urgent vs. Important
Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and First Things First popularized the concept of a Time Management Matrix for prioritizing that I love. The system advocates the use of four quadrants to determine the tasks you “need” to do and deciding what should be made a priority.
For those who are not familiar with it, here’s a picture and a brief overview afterwards.

* In Quadrant 1 (top left) we have important, urgent items – items that need to be dealt with immediately.

* In Quadrant 2 (top right) we have important, but not urgent items – items that are important but do not require your immediate attention, and need to be planned for. (This quadrant is highlighted because Covey emphasizes this is the quadrant that we should focus on for long term achievement of goals)

* In Quadrant 3 (bottom left) we have urgent, but unimportant items - items which should be minimized or eliminated. These are the time sucks, the “poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part” variety of tasks.

* In Quadrant 4 (bottom right) we have unimportant and also not urgent items – items that don’t have to be done anytime soon, perhaps add little to no value and also should be minimized or eliminated. These are often trivial time wasters.

9. The Importance of Being on Time
It’s not strictly a matter of one’s business; the busiest people are often the most punctual, while those with the least to do sometimes struggle the most with being on time. It’s also not that late people don’t set aside enough time to arrive on schedule; even when they give themselves more time, they simply end up taking more time, and still arrive late. And contrary to the popular conception of later-comers as lazy slackers who willfully disregard the needs of others, most folks who struggle with being late do want to be punctual. Those who are consistently late may have a tendency to:
Misperceive the passage of time. Studies show that people who are consistently late underestimate how much time has passed. So for example, you need to be somewhere at noon and start getting ready at 11:15, thinking you have plenty of time.

Underestimate how long things will take. Those who are consistently late typically underestimate how long it will take to do something, even when there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. For example, once when you went into work on a holiday, and there was little traffic, and you caught almost every green light, it took you 12 minutes to get there.
Engage in “magical thinking.” When it comes to time, the unpunctual are perennial optimists. They believe they can do a whole bunch of things in a limited amount of time, or that each thing won’t take as long as it really will.
Procrastinate in general. People, who struggle with being late, are often prone to procrastination in all areas of their lives. This may be because they are more easily distracted than others, need a deadline to get motivated, and/or enjoy the “rush” of trying to beat the clock.
Be easily distracted. Those who are easily distracted have difficulty being punctual because on the way from point A to point B, they get pulled into point C. You’re headed out the door and figure it wouldn’t hurt to check your email before you go, and then as you check your email, you decide to check Facebook too, and before you know it, ten minutes have slipped away.
Need an external deadline to get motivated. Some people feel they work best under pressure, and can’t get going until a deadline is looming. At which point they go into mildly-panicked, hyper-drive mode.
Enjoy the satisfaction of rushing to beat the clock. For those who are easily bored, enjoy taking risks, and seek bouts of intense stimulation, the rush to beat the clock can feel like an exciting race. Those who are late because they enjoy the rush of trying to beat the clock subconsciously set their own fires to then enjoy the thrill of trying to put them out.
Feel anxiety. Studies have shown that folks who struggle with being late tend to be more anxious in general than other people. They may use the rush described above as a way to keep them from thinking about their nervousness.

10. School Tardiness, a Growing Problem by Murray Light
A significant number of school-age children have television sets in their bedrooms, and a great many probably are watching a late movie or one of the late-night talk shows when they should be sleeping. When and if they have an alarm clock, they just continue to sleep after it goes off.
I wonder, too, if some tardiness can be attributed to the late arrival of their school bus that then results in their late arrival to school. Many years ago, when youngsters walked to schools in their neighborhoods, this was not a problem. Today, most are bused to school, and if the bus is late, so are those who are on it. This tardiness should not be counted against the students.
RELATED STUDIES
1. Impact of Tardiness on School Success According to the results of the study of the U.S. Department of Education on “truancy”, which is related to tardiness, being present and on time in going to school are big factors on the “success and behavior” of the students (Zeiger, n.d., para 1). His article was all about the different impacts and effects of student tardiness, not just on his academic performance, but also on the behavior and the students’ performance on his/her job when he/she acquires one. He explained that tardiness is indirectly proportional to the students’ GPAs, that is, students who are often late in coming to class have a bigger possibility of having lower GPAs. Zeiger (n.d.) explained that the lessons discussed during “morning classes” are the most “crucial” because during these times, the students are most alert and mindful, so when students come in late in class, they miss out the opportunity of possibly having more knowledge(para 2). He also explained that students who come late have negative effect, not just on the other students but also on the teacher. They cause distraction whenever they come in especially when the teacher is discussing which could lead them veer away from the lessons and cause behavioral problems and “missed instructions”. They could also cause the teacher problems like having to restructure the lessons and reteach the “missed materials”
2. Study of Enamiroro Oghuvbu: Growing Concern of Tardiness Another study was the one conducted by Enamiroro Oghuvbu in Nigeria. The objective of the study was to determine the causes of the absenteeism and lateness among the secondary students in Nigeria and to seek for solutions to the growing problem. According to Oghuvbu (2008), female students are more likely to be late than male students because of “their involvement in domestic activities by their parents” (para 7). Also, as cited by Oghuvbu, “distance to school, school discipline, family background and school location” (Emore, 2005) are some of the common causes for the tardiness of the secondary students. The study revealed that the causes of lateness among the secondary students in Nigeria were “going late to bed because of watching films and home movies, resulting into wake up late in the morning, distance to school and keeping friends who are not students” (Oghuvbu, 2008). These results went consistent with the results of Oghuvbu’s reference studies which proves that tardiness among students have been a growing problem and that it is caused, not just because of the students but also because of the lack of imposing discipline from the parents.
3. Lateness: A Major Problem Confronting School Administrators in Delta State,
Causes of lateness
There are numerous causes of lateness to school. Amongst others, the following are the major causes of lateness to school:
(a) Going late to bed: This is one of the major causes of lateness to school. Going late to bed could result in waking up late, as could be deduced from the literal meaning of the saying “early to bed early to rise”.
(b) Watching films and late-night movies: The individual involved in watching films and home videos may be so captivated and hypnotized by it that he/she forgets that he/she has to be in school; and at sudden realization, he/she hurries off and likely may not be punctual (Ukoshi, 2004).
(c) The habit of waking up late: Some folks find more pleasure in early morning sleep than the overnight sleep. These kind of people always wake up late to hurry off to school but most times, situation may not really be in their favor thus they are irresistibly late to school.
(d) Distance/location of school: The further the location of the school from the student/pupil or staff, the more distractions, obstacles, friends to say high to, hold-ups to beat, go-slows, etc are there that tend to hinder his/her punctuality to school. For instance, consider a situation where an individual working in DELSU Secondary School, Abraka, leaves Eku or Igun every day for work. This individual is likely not to be punctual when compared with some one of the same status living in Abraka, possibly even close to the school; he is more likely to be punctual because the level of
(e) Engagement in untimely domestic chores/ activities: These activities are necessary but doing them at a wrong timing is what cause lateness to school. In some cases, most parents even oblige their wards to help carry their goods to the market and other such kind of chores before going to school. Activities like these inevitably cause lateness to school, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Furthermore, Oghuvwu (2008) concurred Dafiaghor 167 to this when he opined that “lateness is common as a result of students’ involvement by parents”.
(f) Innate anxiety level: Most people always have that relax mind in anything they do; they do not even care if they are running late or not; they do not beat their relax temple or mood of doing things. Even when a little hurry could make them punctual, they prefer to be late than beat their innate temple; this is a glaring situation.
(g) Family background: In some cases, the habit of lateness is being copied from family members. For instance, the child that sees the father always going late to work could also either voluntarily or involuntarily learn the habit, thus go to school late also. This is supported by Peretomode (2001) and Egbule (2004) when they elaborated the concept of Nature-Nurture as it affects an individual’s habits. (h) Too much body care and excessive facial/body make-up: In some cases, individuals are obsessed by 168 Int.NGO.J. their appearance to the detriment of timely engagements in school. Oghuvwu (2008) agreed to this when he opined that “lateness is common among females more than males”. This could be as a result of the fact that females require more time for their body and facial care and make up.
4. Action Research on Tardiness: Philippines
INTERNAL FACTOR
The table below is representing the personal factor of every student which comprehensively supports the reasons in being late with; attending to classes, flag ceremony, and submitting paper works, etc. This information gives us the detail on how they spend their residual time after classes or while class is going on. This clearly shows that friends/peer influence plays vital role in student’s life; secondary is the compulsion with TV shows and the pre-occupation of mobile phone to student’s attention as well as the household chores that was understandably assigned to young adolescents in their share of tasks at home.
TIME MANAGEMENT

Figure 1.1
The table below (figure 1.2) supports the leniency of students in their study. Basically, a sound mind needs adequate sleep to function well especially in learning lessons at school. Adequacy on the number of hours of sleep per I ndividual vary by its age category. A typical student in adolescent stage needs 8-10 hours of sleep to have a keener sense of understanding the lessons all throughout the day. A student who has a complete 10 hours of undisturbed and sounding sleep was generally gaining outstanding results in academic excellence.
The graph below represent the sleep habit of the subject which was generally falls at 9:00 pm and 10:00 pm. If a student would sleep at 10:00 pm and should wake up at 5:00 am, therefore, the student had only 7 hours of sleep, this 1 to 3 hours depravation of sleep has significant effect on the learning period of every student. This would affect the mood, span of attention and mental aptitude.

Figure 1.5 Figure 1.6

Figure 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6 represents the external factors that affect tardiness of the students. Figure 1.4 states the distance of home to school and figure 1.5 will represent the mode of transportation/ utility to reach school and the time allotted to travel to school was shown at figure 1.6. In figure 1.4, it shows that 36% of the students were living at the distance of more than 2 kilometers and most these students had tricycle as the mode of transportation and they had to travel more or less 20 to 30 minutes to reach school. With these figure representation, a student would likely be late for school since the time allotted for travel is almost or half of the hour, they need to wake up early and prepare. A typical student needs 1.5 hours to prepare and travel to school, they should wake up as early as 5:00 am to have ample time for preparation and allocate time threshold for travel if the student aspires punctuality.
Tardiness Caused by the Frequent Use of Facebook Another research partly studied about tardiness but tackled a specific reason or factor. A study by Pimentel and Quijada (2011) focused on the frequency of use by the UP Cebu freshmen students of Facebook and a part of the study tackled about the effect of the famous social networking site to UP Cebu students’ punctuality and academic performance. For their study, Pimentel and Quijada collected 60 respondents and provided them with questionnaires. The questionnaires contained questions that ask the respondents about their use of Facebook and its effects. A certain question asked the respondents if late-night use of Facebook has an effect on their punctuality. According to the results of the study, three out of 60 respondents are always late, eight said they are sometimes late, 12 said they are seldom late and 37 said that they never get late due to late-night use of Facebook. Generally, the results showed that the respondents are seldom late in class because of late-night use of the social networking site. Ledoux, as cited by Pimentel and Quijada, said that lack of sleep causes neural malfunctions and further affects a person’s behavior. In the study’s case, it is a student’s punctuality that is affected.
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
This chapter contains the discussion on the research design, the research environment, the necessary research instrument and the data gathering procedures and analysis used in this study.
RESEARCH DESIGN The design used for this research is correlation coefficient. The action research examines the extent of relationship between the frequencies of tardiness of the Grade Nine students to their academic performances. Correlation coefficient research basically answers how the frequent tardiness of a student could influence his or her academic performance.
RESPONDENTS
One hundred and ninety-six (196) male and female grade nine students of different sections (namely Saint Pedro Calungsod, Saint Peter of Verona, Saint Margaret of Hungary, Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Pius V) were the subjects of the study, all belonging to San Pedro College Basic Education Department, Ulas Campus, Davao City.
RESEARCH INSTRUMENT

A table containing the academic performance and tardiness records of the Grade Nine students serves as the research instrument. The names of the respective respondents were censored for their safety and protection.

The research instrument is validated by Mrs. Amelita E. Labrador under the suggestion of Mrs. Paulina J. Deiparine.

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

The researchers wrote a letter addressed to the Assistant Principal, Mrs. Paulina J. Deiparine, asking for her approval in allowing them to collect the academic performances and frequency of tardiness of the Grade Nine students from the Registrar’s office.

With the permission given, the researchers then proceeded to gather the necessary data which was given and validated by Mrs. Amelita E. Labrador, the head registrar. The pieces of data were organized in a table with the names and sections removed to assure the confidentiality and protection of the students’ reputations. Afterwards, the data was analyzed by Mr. Rogelio D. Rasay III MAT-MATH.

Lastly, the researchers interpreted and evaluated the analyzed data.

DATA ANALYSIS

In testing the hypothesis of the study, the following statistical tools were used to facilitate the quantitative analysis of the data. * Frequency – a statistical tool used to summarize and organize a set of data. Presenting data in a frequency distribution makes inspection of the data set much more manageable than presenting the entire set of raw data. * Percentage – a statistical tool used to determine the Academic Performance. * Mean – another name for average. The mean is calculated by adding all of the values together, then dividing by the number of original values. * Pearson Correlation Coefficient – a statistical tool used to test the relationship between the frequency of tardiness and the academic performance of the Grade Nine students.

CHAPTER FOUR
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS This chapter shows the results, analysis and interpretation of data towards the frequency of tardiness and academic performance on grade nine students. The researchers used descriptive statistics to determine the mean of each grades. Lastly, the Pearson Correlation Coefficient was used to test if there is significance between the tardiness of grade nine students and their grades.
TABLE 1
FREQUENCY OF TARDINESS AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
LEVEL
| Frequency | Percent | Valid Percent | Cumulative Percent | Valid AP P A D BTotal | 746128129184 | 40.233.215.26.54.9100.0 | 40.233.215.26.54.9100.0 | 40.273.488.695.1100.0 |

The table showed that 40.2% of the students got a grade of AP (Approaching Proficiency) that ranges from a general average of 80-84. 33.2% of the students have a grade of P (Proficient), their general averages ranging from 85-89. 15.2% of the students have a grade of A (Advanced) with their grades ranging from 90-100. These are followed by 6.5% students who got a grade of D (Developing) and lastly, 4.9% students that received a grade of B (Beginning). Simply put, Table 1 shows on how many students got a grade of A, P, AP, D or B. All these grades are their averages in the second semester. The averages are rooted from their grades in different subjects, namely Math, Science, Christian Living, English, Araling Panlipunan, Computer, TLE and Filipino.
TABLE 2
OVERALL CORRELATION OF ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND TARDINESS Correlations | | Average | Tardy | Average Pearson Correlation 1 -.123 Sig. (2-tailed) .097 N 184 184 | Tardy Pearson Correlation -.123 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .097 N 184 184 |

Table 2 shows that there is no significant relationship between tardiness and academic performance of grade nine students. The relationship is classified as inverse: as one value increases the other value decreases. If the frequency of tardiness increases, the academic performance decreases and vice versa.

TABLE 3
TARDINESS
| Average | Tardy | Pearson Correlation -.123 | | Sig. (2-tailed) .097 | | N 184 |

Table 3 showed that tardiness is not significant in their grades. This implies that being late doesn’t affect that much in your academic performance in school. This crucial piece of information supports our hypothesis.

CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter discusses the summary, conclusion and recommendation of the study of the action research regarding the frequency of tardiness and academic performance.
SUMMARY
The action research focuses on determining the correlation between the frequency of tardiness and academic performance with the respondents as the Grade Nine students of San Pedro College Basic Education Department of School Year 2015. The research design used is Correlation. Correlation research discovers how the phenomena under the action research are related. It answers whether the frequency of tardiness influences the academic performance or the academic performance influences the frequency of tardiness. The researchers obtained the table of the respondents’ academic performances and tardiness records from the Registrar’s Office. The statistical tools that were used are the following: Percentage, Frequency and Pearson Correlation Coefficient.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
The following findings were obtained based on the gathered data: 1. Based on Table 1, 40% of the students got a general average of AP (Approaching Proficiency) in their second semester and only 12% of the students got grades of B (Beginning) and D (Developing). Some of these students were late but their grades are still classified as average. 2. There is no significant relationship between the frequency of tardiness and academic performance of Grade Nine students according to Table 2. 3. Based on Table 3, the frequency of tardiness does not affect the grades of the Grade Nine students nor does the academic performance affect the frequency of tardiness. 4. The data also showed an inverse relationship thus when a value decreases, the other increases.
CONCLUSION
Based on the findings of the study, the following conclusions were drawn: 1. Majority of the students have a general average of AP (Approaching Proficiency) and the lesser population of the students have a general average of either D (Developing) or B (Beginning). 2. The frequency of tardiness of the Grade Nine students does not affect their academic performance and there is no significant relationship between the two.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. To promote a better reputation among the students, they should be taught on the proper meaning of being diligent in attendance. 2. To help themselves in attaining a high grade on their conduct, the tardy students must rid themselves of their bad habits.