The study seeks to examine the writing competence of grade 9 students as a basis to develop an outcomes-based writing portfolio in narrative writing. The undertaking involves 64 grade 9 English teachers and 88 students from different public secondary schools in north Caloocan. Employing the descriptive method, each student was asked to compose three sets of narrative essays which were subjected to a rating based on culhams's 6+1 trait writing rubrics. Survey questionnaires on the perceived challenges and solutions in narrative writing were prepared for the students and teachers to answer. The findings reveal that the general interpretation for students' writing competence on the following writing traits is 'experienced' : ideas (3.894), organization ( 3.640), voice (3.928), word choice ( 3.549), conventions (3.572) , and presentation (3.621)-except for sentence fluency (3.496) which is 'Developing' likewise, the data reveal outstanding perceived challenges in narrative writing, such as lack of substantial reasoning, struggle on connecting events logically, minimal commitment in writing, limited vocabulary, lack of capacity to construct varieties of sentences, frequent spelling errors, and inconsistent. handwriting. Solutions are identified such as providing students with engaging and authentic activities (word games, peer collaboration, and expose to existing narrative writing texts as models). It is conclude despite of the apparent orientation of the grade 9 students in writing, it seems that they are jaded on developing narrative pieces that contains the craft and substance. It is recommended that teachers should further develop a mores structured and substantial methodology on how to teach writing per stage.

Keywords: Narrative writing, 6+1 trait writing, Outcomes-based, writing portfolio.