Ethiopia’s Student Remedial Program Sees Database Errors, Power Cuts, Broken Promises

When Beza Wubeshet left Debre Birhan for Dilla University, nearly 400 kilometers away, she carried the weight of a second chance. The 18-year-old had just finished high school, but like more than 638,000 students last year, she failed to earn the cutoff mark for a direct path to university. Her score was enough, however, to place her in the government’s new remedial program, a six-month initiative designed to give students who narrowly missed the cutoff another opportunity to secure a university seat.

Beza threw herself into the program with determination. She studied relentlessly, believing that with discipline and long nights, she could pass the second time around. The program represented more than just access to higher education. For her and nearly 70,000 others, according to early reports, it was the possibility of reshaping their futures

When exam day finally came, which too frequently turned to exam night in the five-day period, that sense of possibility quickly turned to disappointment. Beza recalled sitting in the exam hall long past sunset, with repeated power outages and unstable networks stretching the sessions deep into the night. Many students also reported being  confronted with the dreaded message “database error.” Every second spent waiting for the system to reload cut into their testing time. According to some of the students a handful of questions also appeared erroneous to start with. After airing their concerns to the attending teachers, the students expected their results to reflect their exam day problems.

 “Even though we were told to flag erroneous questions, the ‘flag’ button was unresponsive for many of us,” Beza told Shega.

More troubling was the content of the exam itself. Students discovered that the test had fifty questions worth two points each, despite expectations that scores would be calculated out of seventy, as had been the case in previous years. Students also expected that their flagged concerns would be taken into account. Few believe that they were.

At Dilla, where Beza was based, fewer than a quarter of the nearly 4,000 examinees earned a passing grade.

The experience at Dilla was not unique. Students in Haramaya, Metu, Gonder, Arba Minch, Mizan Tepi, Welkite, and other universities voiced similar frustrations, particularly in physics and mathematics exams.

At Haramaya, just 365 of the 1,095 remedial students passed. Yabsera Tilahun, who sat for the exams there, said the problems went beyond electricity and network outages. He claims the source material itself was flawed.

“The exam preparation modules were changed multiple times,” Yabsera said. “The math module was actually a table of contents without any content.”

For him, the failures reflected not only the challenges of test-taking but a pattern of administrative missteps. The altered modules, network failures, erroneous questions, and new scoring system compounded to create a climate where success seemed impossible for many.

Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education introduced the remedial program in 2022 after the results of sweeping reforms done on national examinations. These reforms tightened security, centralized question sourcing, and introduced strict supervision to prevent cheating and leaks. Education Minister Berhanu Nega (Prof) framed changes as necessary for quality, to restore confidence in credentials and to reduce cheating in exam processes. 

However, the reforms that drastically reduced immediate admissions were introduced without a clear, well-resourced plan to accommodate the displaced students. Researchers warned that technical fixes will not substitute for investments in classrooms, teachers and curricula at the base of the system. The result was dramatic. In the first year of the new system, fewer than four percent of students passed the national exam, a stunning drop from previous years.

With more than 800,000 students suddenly excluded from university admission, the Ministry sought to soften the blow. The remedial program was introduced to give a fraction of them another chance. Students who qualified could enter a four-month intensive preparation course and then retake exams. For many, it became the only possible route to higher education.

This year, the exams were administered across 76 testing centers nationwide. Yet the problems that unfolded during the five days of testing cast doubt on whether the program is still serving as a reliable second chance.

Frustrated by what they saw as administrative indifference, remedial students began organizing. On Telegram, more than 3,000 students formed an informal association. They traded stories, shared coping strategies, and drafted letters to both private and public universities. Groups of students visited the Ministry’s headquarters in Addis Ababa to appeal directly to officials.

For a while, their complaints went unanswered. But their persistence eventually attracted attention.

At Haramaya University, the vice president for academic affairs, Mengistu Urge (Prof), sent a letter to the Ministry calling for an inquiry into the students’ concerns.

“Since information about the exam is centralized, we are incapable of assessing the legitimacy of the students' concerns,” the letter reads.

Dilla University’s academic vice president, Tamrat Beyene (PhD), and Arba Minch University’s Bogale Gebremariam (PhD) followed with a similar request.

The real breakthrough came when the Ethiopian Institution of the Ombudsman intervened. Tasked with investigating administrative grievances, the office issued a formal notice giving the Ministry seven days to provide a legal explanation for why the students’ concerns had not been addressed.

“To enable the institution to make a determination, an evidence-backed legal explanation as to why the appellant's concerns were not addressed should be given in seven days,” reads the letter by Mengistu Kegne, Lead Executive of Legal and Administrative Grievance at the Ombudsman office.

News of the Ombudsman’s letter spread quickly among students. On Telegram, messages of excitement and congratulations filled the group. For the first time, they felt their voices might carry weight.

But the optimism faded when the Ministry finally responded nearly three weeks later. In a letter signed by Ebba Mijena (PhD), Head of Academic Affairs, the Ministry rejected the claims outright. The response stated that outages had been addressed promptly through coordination with testing centers and that additional time was granted to affected students. On the question of modules, the Ministry asserted that no changes had occurred.

“All examinees were tested in a uniform manner and concerns of administrative injustice raised by the appellants are completely non-existent,” the letter concluded.

However, documents obtained by Shega indicate that the 'syllabus' was altered in the lead up to the remedial exams to align with the national curriculum change. The Ministry had sent an official letter to all colleges hosting remedial students in March to clarify the changes to the syllabus. Despite repeated attempts by Shega to secure further comment, no official statement was provided before publication.

The Ministry’s dismissal has not ended the students’ campaign. They are preparing another letter to the Ombudsman through their informal association. Yet their chances of success remain slim.

The Ministry of Education continues to tighten its oversight of higher education institutions as part of what officials describe as a transgenerational reform. While the reforms aim to improve integrity and quality in Ethiopia’s education system, they have also narrowed pathways for students struggling to keep pace.

For Beza Wubeshet, who dreamed of a career in social service, the formal route to higher education now seems further away than ever. She continues to hope for another chance, but she and thousands of others are caught in the widening gap between reform on paper and reality on the ground.