Table 1.

1 Frequency and Percentage Distribution of the Respondents

According to Age

Age Brackets Frequency Percent

14 years old 8 2.6

15 years old 194 62.4
16 years old 88 28.3
17 years old 21 6.8
Total 311 100.0

Based on the table, more than half of the Grade 9 students of Tubod

East District were 15 years old with the frequency of 194 out of 311 students

included in the analysis which constituted the 62.4%. This followed by the 16

years old who comprised the 28.3%. These results only showed that majority of

these Grade 9 students were at the right age of their schooling.

The Department of Education (DepEd, 2016) set provisions regarding the

entrance age of Kindergarten and Grade 1 pupils per Department Order 47

series of 2016 (D.O. 47 s. 2016) that Kindergarten must have the age of 5 years

old and the completers will be accepted in Grade 1 of least 6 years old. The

moment they will reach Grade 9 level they should be at the right age of 15 or

16 provided their education since Kindergarten was continuous and no

interruptions.

Consequently, majority of these respondents were on the right age suited

for Grade 9 Mathematics competencies. However, it can be noted that there

were underage and considerably an over-age Grade 9 students. This variability

suited well the purpose of the study that age of the students might affect their

Mathematics ability.

Effects of age on various outcomes such as academic achievement had

been established (Fertig & Kluve, 2005). Gold et al. (2012) claimed that relative

position of a child with regard to her or his age has an effect on achievement

when the average age of a class or learning group is higher or lower. With these

results, this could lead these Grade 9 students of Muncipality of Tubod in a

very disadvantage nature as their age will be one of the factors affecting their

mathematics ability.

Table 1.2 Frequency and Percentage Distribution of the Respondents According

to Gender

Sex Frequency Percent

Female 162 52.1
Male 149 47.9
Total 311 100.0

It can be observed in Table 1.2, that sex of the mathematically

challenged Grade 9 students of Tubod East District was almost identical.

Females constituted 52.1% and males at 47.9% of the 311 students that were

included in this study. This implies that female students still dominated in

Grade 9 Mathematics class. This ratio of number of female to the number of

male Grade 9 students confirmed the results reported by the Philippine

Commission on Women (2014) that there was a gender disparity of secondary

students at 1.15 GPI (Gender Parity Index) or equivalent of 115 females in

every 100 male students. More so, according to the data of Philippine Statistics

Authority (2012) that in the municipality of Lano del Norte, females dominated

the higher levels of education, from high school to post baccalaureate level.

According to Orante (2016) education in the Philippines generally equal

for boys and girls not until they reach secondary education. He further stressed

out that number of male high school students were at a disadvantage position.

This could be attributed to the fact as most of the secondary drop-outs were

males which means females have a higher propensity staying in school than

males (Palanca, 2015). This scenario was also observed by the researcher that

in his school in the hinterland of Tubod Lanao del Norte where he was

teaching, dropout’s incidents were higher in males than females because of the

reason that most of them find seek job rather staying in school.

Table 1.3 Frequency and Percentage Distribution of the Respondents

According to Ethnicity

Ethnicity Frequency Percent

Cebuano 302 97.1
Maranao 9 2.9
Total 311 100.0

Table 1.3 shows that majority of the ethnicity of the Grade 9 students

considered as mathematically challenged were Cebuano who constituted the

most at 97.1% while only 2.9% of 311 students belonged to Maranao ethnicity.

This implies that the ethnic race origin of Grade 9 students in Tubod East

District was Cebuano by a large margin. These results supported the data on
Philippine Statistics Authority (2012) which indicates that one – third of the

population of Lanao del Norte were Maranao people and the other two – third

consist of Cebuanos and other ethnic groups.

These results showed further that there was unbalanced of the number

of cases on ethnicity but not totally unbalanced. Maranao ethnic group had at

least more than 6 cases for analysis, the minimum requirements for fitting data

to a model per parameter (Been, 2015).