Factors affecting class attendance among senior high school learners at Taft National High School S.Y. 2025-2026

Regular school attendance is central to learners’ academic success, personal development, and social integration. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory and the school–family–community partnership framework, this study examined the perceived factors affecting class attendance among Senior High School (SHS) learners at Taft National High School, Taft, Eastern Samar, Philippines, during School Year 2025–2026 and tested whether learners’ demographic characteristics predict those perceptions. A descriptive correlational quantitative design was used with 270 SHS learners (Grades 11 and 12) drawn through Slovin’s formula and systematic random sampling from a population of 827. Data were gathered with a researcher-made two-part instrument covering demographic characteristics and 12 attendance-related statements rated on a four-point Likert scale, and analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, weighted means, and the chi-square test of independence at α = .05. Findings show that learners perceived attendance to be only weakly constrained by the factors examined: the grand mean of the 12 attendance statements was 1.95 (SD ≈ 0.36), the lowest band observed. Peer-related social behavior recorded the highest agreement (M = 2.52), while awareness of make-up assignment procedures recorded the lowest (M = 1.46). No demographic characteristic; age, gender, grade level, religion, parental occupation, estimated family income, or parental educational attainment was significantly associated with the perceived attendance factors (all p > .05); cross-tabulations returned chi-square values of 5.16 (age) to 20.44 (household income) against critical values of 3.84 to 26.30, and every p-value exceeded the .05 alpha. The study concludes that learners’ own accounts do not support the assumption that distance, financial capacity, parental supervision, or peer pressure drive non-attendance at this school, and that attendance behavior is therefore likely shaped by institutional, motivational, and classroom-level conditions that self-report perception measures do not reach. The study recommends that DepEd school heads, class advisers, and teachers (a) strengthen a single, widely publicized make-up work procedure, (b) treat peer-group formation as an attendance resource rather than a risk, and (c) institutionalize an attendance monitoring and early-warning system built on learner-level records rather than perception surveys. Limitations include reliance on self-report, single-site sampling, and the non-significant association results, which preclude causal inference.