As the Ethiopian academic year begins, more children than ever before are going to schools. In 1995, there were nearly 3 million children enrolled in primary schools in Ethiopia. As of 2017, there are more than 20 million children enrolled in primary schools. This is a dramatic growth of about 7 fold in enrollment in 22 years. This growth is a result of government commitment to achieve universal access to primary education manifested by increasing public spending on education, construction of tens of thousands of primary schools throughout the country and hiring hundreds of thousands of teachers.
With all due respect to the amazing success in access, there is one deadly problem unfolding from the Ethiopian education system. The problem is, many of these students going to schools are not learning the basic knowledge, skills and values they need to build their lives. According to the National Learning Assessments of Ethiopia conducted in 2012, 83% of grade 4 and 84% grade 8 students are below proficiency levels in reading, mathematics, English and sciences. What? 84 per cent!? You ask. Yes, 84% of them are below proficient. Of course they are spending their precious years in schools, passing from grade to grade and collecting certificates but they are not learning. Looks painful and hard to believe but calm down and just check your experiences. Haven’t you come across with a grade 4 student unable to read a single word? Or a 5th grader who cannot spell their name correctly? Or an 8th grader unable to answer a comprehension question from a grade-level comprehension test in mother-tongue language?
This staggering challenge that we are facing as a society in education is not something that we can leave for the government to deal alone. It needs coordinated efforts from parents, teachers, government and all other stakeholders. Unless action is taken now to ensure the children in schools are learning and equipped with the much needed skills and values, the consequence will be socio-economic crisis resulting from unemployment, hopelessness, violence and instability.
I value your statement in writing about education the yolk for every social, political, and economic development of human creature, especially; to the developing countries like Ethiopia.
As you stated in your statement there is a dramatic overall achievements on education such as the participants in 1995 (from 3million primary school children enrollment) booms to more than 20million etc in the past 27 prosperous years. Moreover, thanks to the EPRDF led develomental state excluding the private colleges and universities , we have 43public universities which is more far to compare with the reactionary regimes wich they were with one fuedal university or null may be. I share the evaluation you comeup with the bigpush progressess registered mainly on education and other social sectors in spending large budget by EPRDF led goverment over the past 27 success years in ensuring equal distributions both to the rural and urban citizens.
Though I doubt sowehow with the perfection of the data you used as a reference from the National Learning Assessment of Ethiopia , I guess there’s big commitment and initiatives by the EPRDF led goverment to ensure the quality of education thereby massive researches are underway to ensure the quality of it today. Ultimately , as you said the quality of education can be possibly ensured if we work together ,othetwise.
Indeed, the concern you raises credit worthy.
Engineer Tajebe D., pleased to see your extra articles that focuses in different arenas.
Thanks Berhe for commenting. The data from the National Learning Assessment is publicly available. Inasmuch as we appreciate the achievement, we need to tackle the challenge so that we will be able to solve it.
I could not agree more tajie. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for commenting Negie.
This is absolutely true. There is no such a good service in Ethiopia. Where ever you go there is always something wrong. It’s very sad for the people of Ethiopia. I fell so sad for my people and my country. The whole thing is mess.
Thanks for commenting Metsihet. But, your statement ‘the whole thing is a mess’ looks extreme to me. The article is only about education. And even in education, not everything is a mess. There are both success and failure stories – just like any other country at some point in its history. Being able to provide access to an ever-growing youth population is a significant success. The problem is in ensuring quality.
From your comment, it is clear that you care for your people and country which is good. Moreover, the point of raising the problem is so that we can solve it. So, instead of just amplifying the problem, would you also share some ideas how might we solve it?