aduates than for the non-graduates. This fact is not due to the
greater number of failures of graduates in the earlier semesters, when
most of the non-graduate failures occur, but to the increase of
failures for the graduates in the later years, as is disclosed in
Tables II and IV. Accordingly, we may say that those two subjects which
are most productive of school failures are increasingly fruitful of
such results in the upper years. This does not seem to be the usual or
accepted conviction. Certain of the school principals have expressed
the assurance that it would be found otherwise. Such deception is
easily explainable, for the number of failures show a marked reduction,
and the rise of percentages is consequently easily overlooked. It is
quite possible, too, that in some individual schools there is not such
a rise of the percentages of failure for the graduates in any of the
school subjects. In a single one of the eight schools reported here
neither Latin nor mathematics showed a higher percentage of failure for
the graduate pupils over the non-graduates. In the other seven schools
the graduates had the higher percentage in one or both of these
subjects.
6. THE TIME PERIOD AND THE NUMBER OF FAILURES
The statement that the number of failures will be greater for the
failing pupils who remain in school the longer time may seem rather
commonplace. But it will not seem trite to state that the percentage
of the total failures on the total subject enrollments increases by
school semesters up to the seventh; that the percentage of possible
failures for all graduating pupils increases likewise; or that the
failures per pupil in each single semester tend to increase as the time
period extends to the later semesters. Yet radical as these statements
may sound, they are actually substantiated by the facts to be
presented.
PERCENTAGE OF THE TOTAL FAILURES ON THE TOTAL SUBJECT ENROLLMENT,
BY SEMESTERS
Semester 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Per Cent 11.5 13.9 14.5 15.1 14.5 15.3 12.1 9.9 10.9 6.2
The 808 pupils who received no marks, and many of whom dropped out
early in the first semester, are not included in the subject enrollment
for the above percentages. Otherwise the enrollments taken are for the
beginning of each semester and inclusive of all the pupils. These
percentages rise from 11.5 in the first semester to 15.3 in the sixth
semester. Then the percentag
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