A survey of the educational system of the Philippine islands by the Board of educational survey, created under acts 3162 and 3196 of the Philippine Legislature.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 215
TABLE 15.-PERCENTAGE OF FAILURE IN THE PHILIPPINE PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM
1908-1923

Percentages based onSchool year Average daily March Pupild
Average daily March examined at
attendance enrollment end of school
year
190 7-0 8............................................. 54.....................
1908-09............................................. 5 69............
1909-10............................................. 46 62............
1910-11............................................. 50 59...........
1911-12............................................. 51 55............
1912-13................................... 45 49............
1913-14......................................................... 53............
1914-15............................................. 46 46...........
1915- 16......................................................... 4 4...........
1916-17......................................................... 36...........
1917-18......................................................... 31.93 28.88
1918-19......................................................... 30.37 30.11
1919-20......................................................... 31.66 29.24
1920-21......................................................... 28.7 27.45
1921-22......................................................... 30.36 29.25
1922-23....................................................... 29.93 29.00

One of the most effective single measures of the administrative efficiency of a school system is its percentage of failure. Schools are erected
for the purpose of teaching children. Daily records of achievement, examinations, and marking systems, schemes for classifying and promoting
children are merely administrative devices for economical handling of
pupils in large masses. They have become necessary appurtenances of
a system of schools because modern education is "mass-education;"
the spread of democracy over the world has made impossible the individual instructions of pupils.
Judged by the standard of a very small percentage of failure the
Philippine schools make a very poor record. Perfectly conclusive evidence on the matter appears in the annual reports of the Director of Education. We have summarized the data for sixteen years on Figure 2.
This figure appears in the general report of the Board of Educational
Survey. The period covered is long, and the data supply indisputable
evidence. In 1923, 300,000 children were marked as "failures" by
a school system designed to make them "successes." Nine hundred and
forty thousand children on the average were in attendance in the schools.
Six hundred and forty thousand satisfied the "standards" of the Bureau
of Education and were promoted to the next school grade. For another