What 320.25 means this year
The pass mark on the 2018 E.C. Grade 12 national exam was 300 out of 600, which is the 50 percent the Ministry used when it announced that 70,544 of the 550,210 candidates who sat had reached it. Kes Seifu's 320.25 clears that by just over 20 marks.
He is not a young candidate finishing school. He is described as an elderly man who has been guarding the same bank branch for seven years, and he sat the same paper, in the same week, as the school leavers.
How the Tigray figures line up
The report places him among 3,146 candidates from Tigray who qualified for university, and that figure matches the regional breakdown the Minister read out on 22 August: Tigray passed 3,146 students at a rate of 11.2 percent, the fourth largest number of passes of any region. The report also says about 29 thousand candidates sat in Tigray. That one does not quite fit: 3,146 at 11.2 percent implies closer to 28,090 sitting, so treat the 29 thousand as a round figure rather than a count.
Where this comes from
The 2018 E.C. results have been read mostly through the top of the table: 591.6 out of 600, the boarding schools, the schools that passed every candidate. A guard of seven years clearing the university mark at 320.25, with six children at home, is the same exam being read from a different end of it.
Sources
Every figure and date above comes from one of these. Open them; a story about your child's school is worth checking.