Only 8.4% of Ethiopian Students Pass University Entrance Exams

For the fourth year in a row, Ethiopia’s nationwide university entrance exams have delivered a sobering verdict. Only a fraction of the country’s students are passing.

Education Minister Birhanu Nega (Prof) announced this week that just 8.4% of the more than half a million test takers, 48,929 out of 585,962 students, achieved the minimum 50% score required for university admission.

While the figure marks a slight improvement over previous years, it underscores the depth of Ethiopia’s education crisis. In 2021, when reforms to the system were first introduced, only 3.4% of more than 800,000 students made the grade. Last year, the pass rate inched up to 5.4 percent among nearly 675,000 students.

“This year, fewer students sat for the exam, but more passed,” Birhanu said, calling the results “encouraging.” He noted that the current cohort marks the end of a four-year reform cycle, and next year’s examinees will be the first to have gone through the entirely revised curriculum.

The reforms have also curbed widespread cheating, which has plagued the exams in past years. Instances of academic dishonesty, the minister said, have fallen sharply from around 20,000 to just 120 cases. A significant uptake has also occurred in the number of examinees taking the exams digitally this year, with around 134,000. Around 1250 schools did not manage to pass a single student, while 50 schools managed to pass all their students. 

The results reveal deep divides in the country’s education system. Boarding schools have consistently outperformed other institutions, with an average score of 71% this year. Students in the capital, Addis Ababa, also fared significantly better than their peers, with an average of 41% and more than a quarter of candidates clearing the threshold. By contrast, the national average score was just 31.6% with students from Oromia securing second place among regions.

The figures point to a system in transition but still struggling to deliver results. For now, a university education remains out of reach for the vast majority of Ethiopia’s young people. That outcome could carry heavy consequences for a nation where more than two-thirds of the population is under 30. Birhanu said they hope to have at least 20% of students passing in the next three years.