Analysis: Following the Terrible Results of Ethiopian Secondary School Leaving Exam in 3 Consecutive Years, What Measures should be taken to Improve Educational Quality?

Introduction

According to World Bank, education is a basic human right, a dominant tool of development, and one of the most powerful strategies used to reduce poverty, promote public services like health and achieve sustainable peace, stability and gender equality. In the employment market, every additional year of schooling led to 90% increment of hourly earnings.

Most countries prioritize improvement of educational quality, and encounter many challenges in boosting quality. The World Bank’s Study on “Education Quality and Economic Growth” suggests three measures of improving educational quality.

Competition and Choice: Creating Conducive environment for private schools and establishing competition between private schools and private-public schools. This measure provides students various alternatives.
Decentralization and Autonomy: Devolving of resources and decision-making power to local units improves quality. However, educational decentralization can only be successful if the capacity building programs are instituted for local authorities, school officials and education governing bodies.
Accountability for outcome: Administering periodical exams to measure performance.

In Ethiopia, although substantial development was made in general education quality system and universal primary education with net enrolment of 88.7% in 2021/2022 academic calendar, it is obvious that there are many loopholes in the education infrastructure as can be observed from the results of the past years’ national exams.

However, this articles analysis the implication of grade 12^th national examination results and areas of interventions to improve educational quality of Ethiopia

Results of Secondary School Leaving Exams for the past three years and Its Implications

In Ethiopia, many students, parents, and academics were surprised by the result of the secondary school leaving national exam in 2021/2022, 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 academic calendars that are administered by the FDRE Ministry of Education in an unprecedented manner. According to the FDRE Ministry of Education data, in 2021/2022, only 3.3% of the students who sat for the national school leaving exam managed to achieve the required 50% and above to progress to university. In 2022-2023, a basically comparable result is obtained from the exam, where 3.2% of grade 12 students got 50% or above scores to proceed to freshman. In the Academic Year of 2023-2024, although some progress has been made compared to previous years, still the result is terrifying as only 5.4% of students gained the required 50% plus marks to proceed to freshmen university classes. This implies that an average of 96% of students who took the exam in the last three consecutive years across the nation are unable to directly join in public universities since their results are below the standard. In the last three years, the national school leaving exam has been administered in a unique manner. For the first time, the exam was carried out on public university campuses to avoid and tightly control all kinds of cheating.

It can be argued, that this terrible outcomes of the national school leaving exams is verification of the low quality of the country’s education and calls immediate remedial actions to be taken to address the apparent harshness of education and spare the next generation from being deprived.

People have given different elucidations for this astoundingly low results. Some blamed students and argued that in previous times, students were used to pass national exams through cheating, but in the last three academic years, due to tough measures taken by the Ministry of Education to abstain from exam fraud, few passed and the majority of the students failed. Others argued that low educational services and facilities, poorly educated teachers, low compensation practices, low morale of teachers, and deficient school infrastructure are the major reasons for the low performance of the students. On the other side, some members of the education community claim that the rigidity of security agencies who monitor exam centers, rigor nature of invigilators, and the entire environment of exam campuses are creating stress and confusion for the students.

Measures to Improve Education Quality in Ethiopia

It is apparent that this miserable results demonstrate the quality of the country’s schools. The question is how can educational quality be improved? Enhancing educational quality is vital not just for students or parents but also for the entire nation as it allows nations to produce scientists, engineers, economists and competitive leaders who would lead their countries into prosperity.

Exam by itself is not a strategy to improve quality of education, but it is an instruments used to gauge the country’s educational quality level, which leads to the design of effective strategies and innovative tactics to boost educational quality. Based on the outcomes of the last three years’ national exams, this analysis presents various tools and techniques that are crucial to improving quality educational centers in the country.

Huge Investment to Expand Educational Infrastructure

Educational infrastructures are those physical facilities that help students get access to quality education. Educational infrastructure includes school buildings, seminar rooms, classrooms, libraries, text books, reading materials, science laboratories, computer labs, fitness and sports centers, and the entire environment surrounded to primary, middle, and secondary schools. Hence, the government at all levels (federal, regional, and local) and their stakeholders are supposed to make huge investments in improving those facilities to enable students to obtain sufficient classrooms, appropriate labs and libraries, and a favorable environment for the whole teaching and learning process. In Ethiopia, many public school buildings in the large cities are too old, library services are poor, classes are not equipped well, and there is a disparity between enrolled students and school capacities. In rural areas, educational facilities are very limited, and students are forced to move to towns or travel long distances to get access to meaningful education.

Improving the Capacity of Teachers and Raising Remunerations

Teachers are responsible for teaching, nurturing, and disciplining children. They control the future of the people and the country. They shape the mindset and behavior of the future generations who will lead their respective countries the day after. Like a candle, teachers sacrifice themselves for the sake of others.

Teachers must be equipped with knowledge, values, and norms so that they can impart them to their students. Many parts of Ethiopian society argue that the failure of education in the country is attributed to the poor knowledge and skills of teachers, as most school teachers upgrade their education through summer programs. It is also undeniable that colleges or teacher training centers are usually joined by individuals who score low in high school national exams. Therefore, the FDRE ministry of education and various regional education bureaus should take the responsibility to monitor and upgrade the educational level of teachers instead of putting an intense burden on the students alone. A student can be good and learn something only when he or she has competent and qualified teachers. Although studies indicated that the Ethiopian government has placed teachers among the priorities to improve educational quality, it is still apparent that there is an urgent requirement to take strategic and practical measures to promote the competence and specialization of school teachers to produce educated generations that are valuable for their community and country.

Since teachers are in charge of the actual classroom performance, it is fundamental to motivate them through fair compensations. Consequently, securing teachers’ compensation rights is just as important as enhancing their skills and knowledge. Ethiopia is ranked as one of the lowest-paying countries for teachers with an average of less USD 100, prompting many higher education academics to seek additional employment to fund their living expenses. Studies indicate that Ethiopian teachers have inadequate salary that does not cover their basic necessities; most do not receive housings from the government, and schools do not host end-of-year events to show appreciation and inspire well-performed teachers. The poor remuneration lowers the morale of teachers and makes the teaching profession unattractive. Therefore, if the FDRE Ministry of Education wants to improve education quality, it is required to address the basic rights of teachers, including pay raises in light of the country’s economic circumstances and the ever-rising rate of inflation, which has a detrimental impact on the lives of low-income teachers. In addition to providing an adequate remuneration, the government can also use other forms of incentives to encourage teachers, such as providing housing, healthcare, and transportation allowances, and arranging them as business cooperatives, and providing funding to set-up their own businesses to earn additional income.

Updating and Reforming the Curriculum

To make the learning and teaching methods more modernized, curriculum should be to be modified and reformed. Curriculum has a strong political, social, and economical impact because it shapes society’s perception and determines the knowledge and skills that are most important to impart to students. Thereby, Curriculum reforms are changing the learning and teaching objectives by inventing new didactic methods to scientifically present valuable skills, knowledge, values, and attitudes to students. In 2023, council of ministers of Ethiopia approved to review education system and revise curriculums to improve educational quality. The new educational system includes rearrangement of general education levels consisting of: pre-primary education, primary (grades 1-6), middle schools (grades 7-8) and secondary (9-12 grades). Therefore, curriculum review is essential to readjust contents and include necessary subjects or remove redundant ones based on the change of modern technology and human science.