Education office in the Amhara regional state has requested the Federal Ministry an explanation about “errors” in the national examination grading
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National Education Assessment and Examinations Agency, a federal agency, confirmed that over 20,000 complaints were filed regarding the result of the grade 12 leaving examination – with which the government selects those students who will join in 43 Universities across the country.
While admitting the problem, the agency claims that only 559 students were affected due to what it called a ” grading problem,” and that they have been fixed. That was discovered during an investigation after grading has been completed. But the issue seems to be much larger than that, and it could even be motivated by hate based ethnic politics from what many in social media are writing.
The Ministry of Education says it will not make an adjustment to the benchmarks for results that determine whether a student will join university or not. Samuel Kifle, State Minister in the Ministry of Education, says the results of students in the parts of Ethiopia where there was a security incident is not different from those previously administered. He is making claims that there was no finding from the Ministry’s analysis that calls for a special consideration for the areas impacted by the war.
But many Ethiopians, as observed in social media, are not subscribing to government positions. Rather, there is strong opposition to it. The sentiment is that the office was probably involved in deliberate malicious practice with the aim to harm students from the Amhara region.
Tefera Feyissa, Deputy Director of the Examination Agency, says the narrative circulating on social media is “far from the truth.”
In response to growing public anger, Amhara regional education says that its responsibility is to ensure that the exam is administered in a peaceful environment, and that it has ensured that is the case.
The office also said that it has requested the relevant authority to carefully undertake the task of grading the grade12 leaving examination by highlighting the social media narrative that was circulating at the time that the exams were stolen.
The Government has announced that over 187,000 students will join universities across the country in the upcoming academic year. Of this number, 63,833 are said to be female students.
There had been recurring instances whereby national examinations were “stolen” and shared on social media by radical ethnic nationalist activists.
Dwindling Public trust on officials working in organisations like National Education Assessment and Examinations Agency emanates from the view that radical ethnic nationalists are fielded in Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government structure and at the regional levels as well.
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