The importance of education in national development can never be underestimated. Education is a key investment that can break the Filipinos’ seemingly endless cycle of poverty, and provides the people, particularly the youth, with more opportunities. No country in the world can harness the full potential of its people without committing them to standard education. This makes education the most potent vehicle for the development and empowerment of an individual; economic, political, and social development; national growth; and enthronement of peace (Exam Ethics Project, 2005). The effectiveness of an educational institution is the extent to which the set goals and objectives of a school are attained in relation to quality, quantity, equality, and quality of education (Yusuf & Alabi, 2013). For quality education to be maximized, the two of the most important factors to be considered are the teachers and the performance of graduates (Nabayra et al., 2021). They are the frontliners of any education system in achieving its goals and educational objectives. Hence, the performance of teachers is widely recognized as a significant factor influencing education quality (Nabayra & Nabayra, 2021).

Furthermore, Ozgenel and Ozgan (2019) found out that teachers’ performances positively affect the effectiveness of school. They concluded that teachers’ performance predicted school effectiveness and positively influenced. When it is recognized that building effective schools is a difficult process, teachers are expected to be involving and perform at a high level to overcome these challenges and achieve the school’s basic objectives at the desired level. Robinson (n.d.) also advanced that teacher evaluation is necessary since teacher quality is positively associated to student learning and for accountability reasons. Abdullah and Das (2019) also concurred this because for them, evaluation of teaching performances is a large factor regarding learning outcome, student retention, faculty retention, time, classroom environment and salary in developing country like the Philippines. Hence, policy makers and school leaders must allow an evaluation where teachers determine their performance, receive feedback, and establish a performance evaluation system with improvements because of the performance evaluation process (Ozgenel & Ozgan, 2019).

In addition, with education as one of the priority investments of the state for a sustained and developed country, thousands of high school and college students from all over the Philippines receive undergraduate scholarships courtesy of the Department of Science and Technology – Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI) every year. Through these scholarship programs, the DOST-SEI envisions to have developed the Philippines’ human resource capacity in science and technology as required to produce demand-driven outputs that meet global standards (DOST-SEI, 2015).

In return, DOST-SEI scholars are required to render service in the country, preferably in their fields of specialization, after graduation for a period equivalent to the number of years they enjoyed the scholarship. The success of these programs offered by the DOST-SEI could only be measured through its graduates’ achievements and contributions to the country.

Moreover, in terms of mathematics education, according to Prokop et al. (2015), some research studies indicate that the quality of education depends on the teachers’ provision to students based on what they do in the classroom. They concluded that, in preparing the students of today to become successful individuals of tomorrow, science and mathematics teachers need to ensure that their teaching is effective. According to Abdullah & Das (2019), among the excellent performing teachers are the teachers with science background while most of the poor performing teachers with social science background. This only implies that teachers hold an important role in effectively pursuing the teaching-learning process.

Hence, this study sought to determine the teaching performance of DOST undergraduate grantees termed as scholar education graduates in this study, specifically the graduates of Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSEd) major in Mathematics. This could show how DOST-SEI scholar education graduates exhibit excellence in their teaching performance which may inspire and motivate other teachers to embody the culture of excellence in their profession.