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The state lost 8 billion birr to exit exam failures

A study presented at a workshop the Ministry of Education organised with the Mastercard Foundation, Arizona University and the Shiyashone institute reports that 33.1 per cent of candidates passed the exit exam across 2016 and 2017 E.C. Graduates who failed leave without a certificate and cannot be hired on contract or permanently, so they do not repay their cost sharing, which the study puts at more than eight billion birr the state did not collect in those two years. Abraham Tulu (Dr.) of the Addis Ababa University education research centre presented the findings for a team drawn from Addis Ababa, Hawassa and Jimma universities and the Ministry.

Published
Ethiopian calendar
Nehase 29, 2018
Reading time
3 min read
On this page
01

What this says to a student choosing a field this week

This is the part of the study that is worth reading before ጳጉሜን 05. Students studying the field they had put first passed at a higher rate. Health, engineering and natural science recorded high pass rates. Social science, business and education recorded low ones.

That is a reason to rank honestly rather than tactically. The choice is open until the last day of the Ethiopian year and Choosing a university and a field covers how the portal handles it.

02

The pass rates

WherePassedNote
All institutions33.1 per cent66.9 per cent did not pass
Public universitiesOver 52.7 per centMore than 128,000 candidates failed
Private institutions14.8 per centThe highest failure rate recorded
Three private institutionsNobodyNo student passed in any programme, the study says
Exit exam performance across 2016 and 2017 E.C., as presented at the workshop.
03

What happens to a graduate who does not pass

Without a certificate, the study reports, 64 per cent of those who failed could not be taken on either temporarily or permanently. It describes serious anxiety, and shaming by family, neighbours and friends. Over 94 per cent ended up dependent on their families.

Of the 6,030 students who took part in the study, 1,380 had failed between one and five times. Twenty universities were covered, 13 public and seven private.

04

How other countries handle it

The presenter said the international cases the study looked at mostly do not run an exit exam across every programme, applying it instead to selected ones. Ethiopia, he said, is the country that began applying it to all programmes. The Ministry took that route because graduates were leaving higher education without being ready for employment, and it took on the responsibility of improving the quality behind that.

Sources

Every figure and date above comes from one of these. Open them; a story about your child's school is worth checking.

  1. 1የመውጫ ፈተና አፈጻጸም በከፍተኛ ትምህርት ተቋማትTikvah Education, 4 September 2026 (ነሐሴ 29 ቀን 2018 ዓ.ም.)
  2. 2ሪፖርተር (the newspaper the account credits for the report)The Reporter, credited in the post
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