Education is a key factor in the continued economic development of

the country and its ability to enhance the quality of life for its citizens as well as compete within global world markets. The dropout rate has major implications on the development of a productive labor force currently and in the future.

This study aimed to determine the factors affecting increase in school dropouts. Specifically, it sought answers to the following questions: (1)What is the profile of the respondents in terms of the age, gender, grade level last attended, last school year attended, and age when dropped out?; (2) To what extent do the following factors affect the respondents to drop out from their school in terms of physiological, sociological, and psychological?; (3) IsThe results revealed that the null hypothesis that there is no significant difference on the sociological and psychological factors that affect the dropping out of pupil-respondents from their school was accepted because all the computed values in the respective test were lesser than the critical values. Thus, it was interpreted as not significant. This implies that though the means are numerically different, there is no significant difference in the assessments between or among the groups but because they have the same level of assessments. Likewise, in terms of physiological factors, age is not significant or there is no significant difference in the assessments among the age groups. However, there is a significant difference in terms of gender and in last grade level attended, last school year attended and age when dropped-out. The significant difference occurred because female dropouts from grades 1 to 3, dropped-out during SY2011-12 and dropped- out as young as ages 7 to 9 were more affected by the physiological factors.

Based on the findings of the study, the researcher arrived at the following conclusions: (1) the typical pupil-dropouts of Tanque District are mostly around twelve years of age, males, dropped out when grade five and attended the recent school year; (2) dropout pupils are greatly affected by psychological factor that going to school is toxic and moderately affected with poor performance, not prepared in going to school, not received guidance counseling and not interested in going to school. (3) females,grades one to three, ages seven to nine and not studying for more than a year are more likely to dropout from school; (4) the dropout pupils are not affected by poverty but the parents reveal that poverty is the number one prevalent cause of dropping out from school. This could be attributed to the fact that parents who experience poverty do their best to provide the school needs and support for their children while the children perceive that they are not poor. Some dropouts become street children or go into scavenging or child laboring. Thus, they poverty is not felt by them;

(5) in reality, aside from poverty, peer influence, lack of interest and poor academic performance are prevalent problems in dropping out from school.

In the light of the findings and conclusions of the study, the researcher recommends: (1) that teachers should conduct home visitation, to be able to reach out to the pupils who no longer attend classes and discuss with them and their parents the value of education and convince them to go back to school; (2) to minimize the problems on irregular attendance of pupils, teacher should integrate and emphasize in their lessons the importance of coming to school every day; (3) teachers should provide academic assistance to slow learners to prevent them from experiencing frustrations that result in dropping out from school; (4) parents should be encouraged to visit the school or be part of the parenting seminar to know the progress as well as the problems of their children; (5)the school may ask the support of government for funding activities that will provide dropouts the sense of belongingness and self-confidence: role playing on self-enhancement, feeding program, financial assistance through 4P's program, and the like; (6) the proposed intervention program to address the problem of school dropouts is recommended for implementation.