Barely 3 percent of Ethiopia high school students pass exams

Only three percent of Ethiopia’s high school students passed their university entry exam, the education ministry announced on Monday.

“Of the 845,188 students who participated in the matriculation examination, only 27,000 students have achieved the 50 percent required for admission to university,” the Ethiopian News Agency quoted Education Minister Berhanu Nega as saying.

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“This means that only 3.2 percent passed the exam, a decrease of 0.01 percentage points compared to the last school year.”

Nearly half of the schools had no student score the pass mark.

Addis Ababa University lecturer Meseret Assefa said the poor results were in part due to “lack of adequate teaching materials and limited learning and teaching methods”.

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Hailing efforts to curb cheating in the examination, he said there was a lack of focus in addressing the root cause of the mass failure.

According to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, Ethiopia has made “significant progress” towards universal primary education with at least 88 percent of the country’s children enrolled in primary school in 2021-2022.

“Although most children enrol in school, many do not progress, with only 33.1 per cent making it to secondary school,” UNICEF said.

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Some 90 percent of 10-year-olds do not know how to read or understand simple sentences, according to the report.