BULAOEN EAST NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

SISON, PANGASINAN

CONSEQUENCES OF STUDENTS’ TARDINESS

INSIDE THE CLASSROOM

WILMER L. BIALA
GERALYN M. FREGILLANA
IAN JAMES P. LUMAGUE
APPLE S. MOLINA

GAS-12

2019
MRS. DONNA CLAIRE C. BATERINA
 CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM

Background of the Study

Tardiness, according to Weade (2004) is “being late for any measurable length of time

past the schedules start time for work or school.

Late-coming to school has become a major problem in many schools. Current research

has demonstrated that many schools are performing badly due to inefficient use of the teaching

and learning time. The impact of this great menace cannot be over emphasized, as it has

contributed immensely in a negative way to the academic achievement of learners and the

functioning of the school (Okpupara and Chuwuone, 2007).

A school is primarily an established institution that aims to educate learners (Oxford

Advanced Learners Dictionary, 2010). It is designed with the purpose of bringing children from

different families together under one roof (the classroom) for the purpose of teaching and learning

under the direction of teachers.

One of the important traits entering into a successful person’s character is the habit of

punctuality (Phurutse, 2005). Effective teaching and learning cannot take place without the

coming together of the teacher and the learners (Oghuvbu, 2012). A learner that is not regular in

school, faces learning problems resulting from late-coming to school such as truancy and inability

to read and not consulting with the teacher (Onouwodeke, 1995).

Lateness is a function of time and as such time is usually used as the criteria for

determining lateness. Late coming violates the principle of punctuality and if not checked at the
onset, may become a habit with the individual involved and may have negative consequences

(Breeze et al., 2010).

Lateness could result into poor academic achievement, disruption in class, difficulty in

keeping accurate records, and damage of school reputation. (ETC, 2009).

To lessen the effects of students’ tardiness and to decrease the number of students who

come late to school, the primary goal of this study is to investigate the different causes of late-

comingtardiness among Junior and Senior High School students of Bulaoen East National High

School and to provide solutions on how to handle students who have a significant record of late-

comingtardiness.
Statement of the Problem

Specifically, this aimed to determine the effects of students’ tardiness inside the

classroom. The study seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What causes students to arrive late to school?

2. Who influence students to attend to school late?

3. What are the impacts of tardiness to students?

Scope and Delimitation

30Thirty students will be used as sample in conducting the research. The general intent

of this study is to identify the factors affecting the time arrival of students to school.

This study considers every aspect of students’ personal information that has an impact

on their academic performances and behaviors such as their gender, age, home location and

family background. Each of the respondents is given the same questionnaire to answer. From

their answers, the researchers will be able to determine the factors affecting the teaching and

learning strategies inside the class.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to identify the factors that hinder students from arriving early

in school.

Significance of the Study

The findings which this study will reveal, may benefit certain groups and the benefits

may be able to gain are as follows:

 STUDENTS. The results will provide the students especially late-comers with some

knowledge on how they may interrupt other students and teachers, they may lose their focus on

the point they were going to make. They will know what are the possible actions they need to do

in order to avoid coming late to school and for them to also realize how important punctuality is.

It will give them a realization that late coming is not useful to them and to the people around them.

TEACHERS. The given data will guide the teachers on what to do with students who are coming

late to class. The teachers will understand why some students arrive late. They will be informed

about the factors associated with students’ tardiness, the effects to the school performance of

students, and the right moves to help them.

PARENTS. Like the teachers, the parents will also realize their great role in molding their

children’s attitude and performance. The collected data will help them formulate solutions to guide

and advice their children on what should they do because parents may also be one factor who

affect students on arriving late to school.

SCHOOL. If late coming is not addressed in schools, students may not know the significance of

being on time for anything. The school could formulate regulations to lessen the record of students

who arrive late to school and for the teachers to realize their responsibilities when it comes to

punctuality.

FUTURE RESEARCHERS. The ideas presented may be used as reference data in conducting

new researches or in testing the validity of other related findings. This study will also serve as

their cross-reference that will give them a background or an overview of the consequences of

students’ tardiness among students.

Definition of Terms

Listed below are terms taken from this research, which the researchers believe, have to

be defined. This is necessary to enable the future readers of this study to easily understand the

contents of the research.

Absenteeism- a tendency to be away from work or school without a reason: the practice or habit

of being absent from work or school.

Adolescents- is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally

occurs during the period from puberty to legal adulthood.

Dropout- a person who stops going to a school, collage, etc., before finishing: a person who drop

out of school

Interdisciplinary- involving two or more academic, scientific, or artistic areas of knowledge:

involving two or more discipline.

Late-Comers- someone or something that has recently arrived or become involved in something.

Misbehavior- the action of misbehaving; bad behavior.

Punctuality- is the characteristic of being able to complete a required task or fulfil an obligation

before or at a previously designated time.

Tardiness- the habit of being late or delaying arrival.

Teacher-student relationship- the academic relation between teachers and their students.

Truancy- the action of staying away from school without good reason; absenteeism.
 CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Coming to school late is one of the top issues and one of the major concerns that marked

the Junior and Senior High School community of Bulaoen East National High School. We cannot

avoid or foresee of being late sometimes but when students come to school late frequently is

definitely something a school would consider as a problem. As students of BENHS, being

responsible is a part of the student’s learning considering that school is also the place where a

child learns to follow rules and regulations, be on time, tracking schedules and meeting their task.

In accordance to our research to address this problem, the school must determine the

possible reasons of student’s tardiness. There are several reasons for a student to be late. First,

students commit tardy because they wake up late, this is due to the bunch of requirements, they

need more time to accomplish the tasks given to them and they spend more hours at night to

achieve the task. What challenges them more is because teachers pressured them a lot especially

the Grade 12 students, this result to the lack of sleep among students. Second, their home

location matters to them. Others live from farther places resulting to late arrival at school. Third,

not all of the entire BENHS students have their own transportation. They most probably ride on a

transportation such as motorcycle or tricycle and due to the distance of their home from the school

they encounter difficulty in arriving at school, plus students are not the only one who needs a

transportation but some teachers need it too. Lastly the weather, when typhoon or rain arrive it

also affects their arrival time to school because some students are having difficulty in getting out

of their home due to flood or heavy rain and it would be a difficult part to them to go to school.

These results mark the major problems why some of the Senior High School students come to

school late. Now the question is what could be the possible results when they still continue this

habit of being late? This type of habit may affect the student’s academic performance of the
students that may lead to low achievement, plus they might miss school works resulting to

difficulty in catching up with the topic in a certain subject.

Being always present in class and getting to school on time are two of the crucial

determining factors of a student’s success. Not just as a student but as a person who will be

managing his/her own life in the future. Given the importance of being punctual, this study aims

explore and find out the factors that affect the punctually of BENHS students. In this chapter, we

will be discussing about the background of our study. it includes facts about tardiness, the different

factors that causes it and its effects to the students as students and as bearer of their own lives

in the future. From reliable research materials like online journals and research papers, we will

provide some facts and theories from authors, teachers and notable people in order to have

concrete justification of our study.

First, we will give a definition of tardiness and present some theories and facts about it.

Next, we will discuss the various factors that causes the students to come to school late, the

psychological theories, the observation of the teachers and personal reasons of the students.

Lastly, the effects of tardiness to students, not just to himself/herself but also to his/her future and

to other people, will be discussed.

According to Scott “Perform well, a non-profit policy research and educational

organization, reports that frequent tardiness is associated with lower grades and lower scores on

test. It is also linked to low graduation rates in addition students who are routinely late are more

likely to fail in Senior High School—or even drop out. Second point is the social criticism; the

social experience has a powerful impact on a child’s feelings about school and his ability to be

academically successful (Scott, 2016).

According to Jumare et al. (2015), their findings revealed that study area has relation to

students late coming to school. They indicated that there are more female late comers than boys.
The percentage shows 56.7 percent against 43.3 percent. Reasons could be hypothesized as to

why female students come to school late; it may be for house work such as cooking, washing of

kitchen utensils, and giving care to the younger ones at home, also due to nature of female in

terms of security. The study also revealed that most late comers among the students in the study

area were between the ages of 16 – 20 years. The percentage indicated 58.3 percent as against

the two other age brackets. One can infer that this could be related to adolescent stage in the life

of the students. Adolescent age is always related to misbehavior and less fear of repercussion of

actions. Students at this stage feel they can have control over themselves, clever enough to

manufacture lies and decide on what their future should be with the aid of peer groups. The

findings also revealed that Senior High chool students come to school late more

than junior students. The results show that 53.3 percent of the respondents were senior students

who came to school late during the period of this study. This also could be attributed to the above

established reason for adolescent age bracket to among the senior students. In addition, the

senior students could have the feeling that when they come late to school they may not be

punished after all the perfects on duty are their friends, thus do not fear anything. It could also be

inferred and related that due to poor economic status of parents many students do take care of

themselves. In other words, many senior students do some casual jobs for living and also

schooling. Therefore this could be a cause for their late coming to school. Most of the parents of

these late coming students belong to lower level of economic status. This is evident by for

example where they work (others) which imply they do not work at all or the work they do, the

students feel shy to disclose, maybe because of it being low. Then due to this the parents could

not afford computer in their houses and lastly majority of the parents owns motorcycle.

In a study by Egan, (2014) that took place in a high school in New England that had over

2000 students enrolled, 39 were identified to be inexcusably tardy to school for at least ten times

in the quarter. The purpose of the study was to find out the effects of an incentive based
intervention. Four students, after intense screening of the data collected, were eligible to

participate in a study that took 17 weeks to complete. Egan used food as an incentive to get

involved the four students getting free breakfast when they came earlier as a form of motivation.

The results from this study were not the desired ones since students needed more than just free

food to motivate them to come early to class.

According to Mukuria and Kithae (2013), material taught at the time the student was

absent may be difficult to understand later when the student studies alone and may result in the

student failing the course or test or assignment. Tardiness could affect the student performance

leading to low marks because of the missing instructions. In some cases though, lecturers have

to restructure their lesson which wastes instructional time as they have to re-teach the already

taught material. Students may have a hard time mastering the routine when they are constantly

late; they may have a hard time settling into the routine, resulting in them always being late or

they can also feel disconnected with school and may have behavior problems and end up being

school dropouts. When a student is regularly tardy, the lecturer may think of it as disrespect and

start treating the student differently or be hostile towards the student, resulting in them not feeling

confident enough to contribute towards class discussions.

In another study, Perveen and Kazmi, (2013) revealed that students come late to class

because their lecturers are tardy too. The purpose of the study was to look into the relationship

between lecturer tardiness and job satisfaction; whether lecturers show up late because they are

not satisfied with their job? This study was conducted in Pakistan, involving a sample of 400

female lecturers from both private and government sectors in the Abbottabad district. A job

description index and a punctuality scale were used as measures to gauge the relationship

between punctuality and job satisfaction. From the questionnaire handed out, the results showed

a positive correlation between job satisfaction and lecturer punctuality, indicating that lecturers

who were not happy with their work environment had punctuality problems. This can be one of
the factors that cause students to come late to class. When students observe that their lecturer is

always tardy, they can themselves resort to coming late to class since they do not see the point

of coming to class when the lecturer is not there yet.

As BENHS students, we are expected to perform well with excellence in everything that

we do, most especially in the academic aspect. One factor that dictates the quality of performance

of a student is his/her punctuality that is, getting to school on time or being tardy. As cited by

Nakpodia and Dafiaghor (2011), “lateness” can be defined as the “situation where an individual

arrives after the proper, scheduled or usual time (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 5 th ed.,

1995).

Synder (2011) added that, habitual lateness to class is typically a sign of devaluation and

contempt for teachers and other students who have arrived to class punctually. Even more

important, it is most likely a sign of devaluation and contempt for one’s own education, albeit

unconscious, since the student’s habitual lateness will necessarily curtail his or her time in class

and cause the student to forfeit important opportunities for learning.

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, 8 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.

Tardiness among students has its own negative repercussions. Nakpodia and Dafiaghor

(2011) emphasize that lateness or tardiness is not just the problem of the late students but it

affects the surrounding people. A student coming late in class distract the rest of students and

disrupts the flow of the teacher discussions. It is even a burden to the students whom late students

ask for what to catch up with. The rest of the effects is given by Nakpodia and Dafiaghor are about

the welfare of the whole school, its productivity and revenue. Knowing the possible effects of

lateness or tardiness, it is necessary for solutions to be executed.

Nakpodia and Dafiaghor (2011) stated that school administrator must lead by example.

They should be punctual in their own meetings and classes to avoid students to think that being

late is just alright since even the authoritative persons are doing it. They should as well teach it

and integrate it in every lesson. The effort on the remedy on lateness or tardiness does not start

and end with the school. It must begin with the parents of the students and the government must

take part as well. Transportation must be improve in order to avoid students getting stuck in traffic

or encountering other obstacles down the street.

Some schools have already started finding solutions that would effectively minimize

and/or eliminate tardiness among students. One of the solution made by some school is

implementing tardiness policies, where in they take steps in approaching students and parents

for them to solve the problem. CAESC has their policy work this way. Other school initiated

interdisciplinary curriculum that integrates discipline and conduct academics.

Cardogan said that a school in Chicago, Illinois adapted a similar curriculum and yielded

positive results. Students under the interdisciplinary program exhibited more positive behaviors
from students not from the curriculum. Interdisciplinary students showed less absences and

tardiness, as well as higher grades. Other schools made smaller academic changes such as

developing personality works and cooperatives learning actuvities, such as creation of portfolios

and tutorials to younger students. This taught the students better goal-setting, decision making

skills and time management. In return, students under this behavior modification programs yielded

less tardiness in higher grades. Breez et al. (2010) contributed by saying that, lateness is

synonymous with “tardiness”, which implies being slow to act or slow to respond, thus not meeting

up with proper or usual timing. In most schools, a student is considered tardy when he/she is not

present when the school bell rings or when the first teachers starts to give instructional materials

for the first subject in the morning class

According to Zeiger (2010), the most essential learning time of the day for the students

lies in the morning, specifically between 8:00 to 9:30 AM. It is because the students are most

mindful and observant at this time of the day. It is also the reason why the most important lessons

and subject matters are discussed during this time. So when students are late or are not present

during this time of the day, they, in effect, miss out most of the important lessons to be noted and

learned.

As mentioned by Zeiger (2010), the result from the survey conducted by teachers show

that students with high tardiness rates have “higher rates of suspension and other disciplinary

measures “(National Center for Eduction Statistics Indicators of School Crime in Safety)

[NCESISCS] (2007). It also causes students to have behavioral problems and to drop out. Lastly,

Zeiger (2010) stated that “students who are frequently tardy into school are also more apt to be

fired from a job for showing up late”.

Reasons for being late in class and other factors affecting the punctuality if a student vary.

There had been some theories that pointed out that tardiness is caused by the personality of a

person. Santillano (2010) stated that psychological theorists considered some “personality traits,
including low self-esteem and anxiety” as triggering factors of tardiness. She also mentioned that

while some theorists considered tardiness as an “inborn quality” since our being early or late is

“partially biologically determined”, which she also agreed, other experts also believed that some

people are “chronically tardy” for the reason that they consciously and unconsciously get good

things from it.

In the book cited by Santillano, “Never be late again: 7 cures for the punctually

challenged”, the author Diana DeLonzor suggested that some personality traits could most likely

lead to a person being often late. Some of the traits included were “struggling with self control”,

“feeling nervous or uncomfortable with social situations” and “getting distracted easily”. Santillano

also discussed about the study conduncted by DeLonzor at San Francisco State University in

which she surveyed 225 respondents about their habits that makes them late from their

appointments. It was also a test on the personalities of the respondents that affect their habits.

According to the results of DeLonzor’s study, those respondents that were often tardy apt to be

anxious and gets distracted easily.

Nakpodia and Dafiaghor attribute lateness or tardiness to a lot of factors or causes. Going

late to bed and waking up late next morning are the most common. The authors added film-

watching late at night as a cause for tardiness. The student may forget that he/she needs to be

in school the next day. The distance between the student’s home and school or solely the school’s

location is also considered by Nakpodia and Dafiaghor as a possible cause for tardiness. Not just

because it takes more time to get to school, but according to the authors, the student is

susceptible to more distractions and hindrances along the way. Parent’s untimely tasks and

commands are also reasons that students come late to school. Habitual tardiness can also be

learned from other members of the family, especially from the older ones. Lack of a firm and

consistent policy on punctuality also encourages students to come late at school since there are
no consequences attached to lateness or tardiness. These causes of tardiness will lead to serios

effects.

In another study by Marvul, (2010) an intervention was designed to affect minority male

attendance and truancy in a school in Florida, USA. The research was based on forty male

students who were observed through attendance registers to have many absent days from school;

the intervention included monitoring attendance and notifying parents when a student was absent,

tardy, or truant; participation in a moral character class; and participation in club sports teams.

This study proved that a program that provides support and respect significantly reduced student

absenteeism and antisocial behaviors, and increased attitudes and commitment toward school.

When a student enters a class late he/she may disrupt the flow of discussion and distract

the attention of his/her classmates. Overtime, the child may begin to be criticized, affecting his

level of interest for school. Poor social interaction may lead to low self-esteem that can affect the

child’s ability to focus on learning. Arriving on school late affects their self-discipline, as a student

it is a good start to practice arriving on school early so when a child loses track in being punctual

in school, he/she may also be less responsible in other task. Being time on school is a preparation

for the world outside the school. To address this issue, the school must determine possible

reasons of a student’s tardiness. Students must practice the habit of having time management

such as organizing events, planning ahead of time and daily routine should be scheduled. Another

possible solution regarding this issue, the school may give right discipline through improving the

policy regarding tardiness.

Knowing the possible effects of tardiness or lateness, it is necessary for solutions to be

executed. Due to the fact that tardiness has been giving negative effects on the students

nowadays, the most important thing to do is to develop a firm, consistent and functional policy

that addresses late students. There must be defined sanctions and penalties for late

students. Nakpodia and Dafiaghor (2011) stated that school administrators must lead by
example. They should be punctual in their own meetings and classes to avoid students to think

that being late is just alright since even the authoritative persons are doing it. They should as well

teach it and integrate it in every lesson. The effort on the remedy on lateness or tardiness does

not start and end with the school. It must begin with the parents of the students and the

government must take part as well. Transportation must be improved in order to avoid students

getting stuck in traffic or encountering other obstacles down the streets. When students come late

to class they end up disturbing those who were early, so Bataineh, (2014) attributes tardiness to

a form of disruptive behavior, since it disturbs the rhythm of the lecture in the process distracting

other students paying attention to the lecturer. Though some students can be late by mistake

others do it intentionally for various reasons. Being tardy can mean being sluggish or slow, either

intentionally or otherwise; some people are raised in relaxed environments and end up not

knowing the urgency of doing things fast or on time. Punctuality is one factor that can dictate the

quality of a student's performance; that is either being tardy or early can significantly impact the

student's performance. Moore, (2010) looked at best practices that were employed by Georgia

High Schools administrators, in USA, to reduce student tardiness. The purpose of his study was

to find out the degree of student tardiness in high schools, and to identify strategies which

addressed tardiness problems and reduced occurrences of tardiness. In this study, Moore

employed a mixed method approach for the research design; this method focuses on approaches

that cross qualitative and quantitative boundaries. This is mainly used to combine methods that

are used with quantitative and with qualitative data. During the first phase to find out information

regarding student tardiness occurrences in the district; this was a quantitative and descriptive

approach. For the second phase he used a qualitative and exploratory approach to find out

effective strategies used to reduce tardiness, by means of interviews with the stakeholders. This

research was carried over a population of ten schools within the Georgia District. Questionnaires,

interviews and observations were carried out using random sampling on administrators, lecturers

and students. Random sampling is also known as probability sampling or chance sampling, where
every item in the population has an equal chance of inclusion .School administrators, students

and lecturers who participated in semi-structured interviews outlined reasons why students are

tardy to school. They found the following factors to have an influence on student tardiness among

many others. Transportation was identified as one because they were influenced by late parents

and students who rode with them to school. Some students miss busses and trains and end up

taking a later one, others do not afford the transport and others forcing them to walk longer

distances to get to school resulting in them being late. Moore, found out from administrators and

lecturers who identified another factor that influenced student tardiness to be the layout of the

school; some lessons are allocated far apart on the timetable, in different buildings, which forced

class switching to be a time consuming activity making students to be late for the next class.

Students socialized before classes which made them tardy for the next class. Hallways will be

populated by those socializing and made it difficult for others to pass through to the lesson, making

them late for the next lesson. Lack of administration and tardy lecturers were also a factor that

caused some students to be late. When lecturers themselves come late to class students are

reluctant to attend on time, and if the students are late, the administrators fail to implement the

tardy policy, there is a lot of inconsistency following the tardy policy. But sometimes the lecturer

will release students late and cause them to be tardy for the next class. After interviewing some

students, Moore found out that others come to school late because they go to bed late and wake

up late, so they end up running late trying to prepare for school and at times they do their

homework in the morning.

Some authors (Bataineh, 2014; Marxhausen, 2010; Dafiaghor, 2011) have mentioned

several effects of student tardiness in their articles though. When a student is tardy, they can

disrupt the ongoing proceedings of the class as they walk to their seats, push chairs and tables

or even ask about what the lecturer is doing, this behavior disturbs or even annoys others. When

the lecturer is making an important point or building the foundation of the lesson, a tardy student
can disturb leading a lecturer into forgetting or losing the point they were trying to make. The

lecturer may be forced to start the lesson all over again trying to accommodate the tardy student

and keep them up to speed; but this can lead other students to think that school and learning are

not as important as they are made out to be since when students are late, the lecturer starts all

over again. More often than not at the beginning of the lesson lecturers give out valuable

information like strategies to tackle specific assignments, or tip towards an upcoming test;

students who come late are at the risk of losing out on this valuable information.
 CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes and discusses how the researcher will gather the necessary data Formatted: Justified

and information that will be used in the entire study. This also shows the procedure of data

collection, research design, research method, and the respondents of the study.

Research Design

According to Green and Tull, a research design is the specification of methods and

procedures for acquiring the information needed. It is the overall operational pattern or framework

of the project the stipulates what information is to be collected from which source by what

procedure.

The research proposal will use a descriptive research design and questionnaire is used to

collect data so that the anonymity of respondents is ensured.

Respondent of the Study

The respondents of this study will be the selected students who have shown a significant

tardiness since the start of the school year 2018-2019 .Purposive sampling (also known as

judgement, selective or subjective sampling) is a sampling technique in which researcher relies

on his or her own judgement when choosing members of population to participate in the study.

They will answer the questionnaire that the researchers will give them which supplies the

information that the researchers need.

Sampling Technique Used

The respondents were chosen using the purposive type of sampling. Purposive sampling

(also known as judgement, selective or subjective sampling) is a sampling technique in which

researcher relies on his or her own judgement when choosing members of population to

participate in the study.

___ participants were given questionnaires in conducting the study since it aims to

acquire the causes and effects of students’ tardiness inside the classroom.

Ethical Considerations