Ethiopia: News - National School Leaving Exam Results Shock Many As Only 3.3 Percent of Students Score Above 50 Percent Uni Entrance Mark

27 January 2023
Addis Standard (Addis Ababa)

Addis Abeba — Ministry of Education has announced that out of total of 896,520 students who sat for the national school leaving exam for the 2021-22 academic year, only 29,909 scored above 50% in the exam result announced by the Educational Assessment and Examinations Services (EAES) on Thursday night.

In a presser following the announcement of the result, education minister Berhanu Nega said on Friday that out of the total of 985,384 students registered for the exam, 77,098 were not present during the exam for several reasons, whereas exams for 20,170 students including those who voluntarily walked out on the exam were annulled on accounts of misconducts.

According to the minister the number of students who scored above 50% accounts only 3.3%. Students scored below 50% will not be allowed to join public universities, according to Berhanu, but based on the universities' admission capacity some will be accepted and "it would be worked so that they can score results for the next year".

He said the result is a manifestation of snowballing problems in the education sector and reflects the true status of the country's education quality, making the government and educations community responsible.

The exams were administered in October, 2022 for the first time inside universities and attended by university professors in a bid to avoid cheating and exam leaks which had become a repeated pattern over past years.

Despite the ministry calling the exam a success, it is to be recalled that a student was killed, many others including examiners and security forces injured during the exams in a violence caused by students at Debre Tabor University. The University claimed in a statement that the students were saying the campus "didn't respect the exam system" and further accused them of rejecting the exams on the account that they "couldn't copy from each other".

Ministry of Education, later said some 12,787 students who entered various university campuses in Amhara regional state voluntarily walked out on the exams following the violence.

Prior to the exams Addis Standard reported about worries by some students following the announcement by the Ministry that the exams would be held in the university campuses away from their families and school environment.

In 2019 officials at the Ministry of Education had to respond to outraged students and parents across the country after the results of over 300,000 students who sat for that year's Grade 12 university entrance exam were published, exhibiting massive irregularities including shocking levels of poor performance grades by thousands of students. AS

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