Grade repetition in the Philippines: A multilevel approach

• Main Authors: Go, Albert Thimothy Maceren, Alcala, Sergio Miguel Emnur, Plastina, Ma. Gabrielle Villafuerte
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2023
• Subjects: Grade repetition > Philippines; Statistics and Probability
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdb_math/26; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdb_math/article/1024/viewcontent/2023_Alcala_Go_Plastina_Grade_Repetition_in_the_Philippines_Full_text.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

Grade repetition is an event where a student is held back from their peers to repeat a grade level, adding at least a year into their academic career. Grade repetition has several financial and psychological consequences since the student and the school must allot resources for repeating a grade. Further, past studies found that repeating an earlier grade increases the chances of repeating a later grade level. Presently, there is a lack of literature that focuses on the occurrence of grade repetition in the Philippines. Thus, this study investigated the different factors that affect the rate of grade repetition in the Philippines. Specifically, this study modeled the odds of grade repetition using significant school- and student-level predictors. Stepwise selection was implemented to select the significant predictors. The model is a weighted multilevel logistic regression to account for the hierarchical structure of the data. Model performance was evaluated using the AIC, BIC, and model deviance. The analysis found that all standard errors of the model without sampling weights were underestimated, resulting in numerous effects being erroneously found as non-significant. Further, the model found different student-level factors such as socio-economic status and reading comprehension ability, and school-level factors such as level of shortage of educational materials and staff, to be significant in predicting the odds of a student experiencing grade repetition at least once. Some school-level variables were also found to be significant moderators of the student-level variables. Several policy changes and actions in response to the results were also discussed. Keywords: Grade Repetition, PISA 2018, Multilevel Logistic Regression, Sampling Weights