The 18-year-old Nuhamin Admasu seems indifferent about her school-leaving exam result. She scored 201 out of 600. The social science student claims she was not anxious even before seeing her results as she expected the outcome. She said her secondary school was eventful.

The pandemic that disrupted all routines hit while she was in 10th grade. Nuhamin describes the experience as bitter-sweet. Spending less time at school may have been fun, but the consequence was dire. Sliding to the next grade without a checkpoint after a long break did not seem taxing for her. Her parents decided to enrol her in a different school with the hopes she would get a quality education at a private school with a monthly fee of 2,000 Br.

The expectation to get better quality was cut short as the newly hired Maths teacher could not even speak proper Amharic or English language.

"It's just one of the many malfunctions," said Nuhamin.

The apparent miscommunication evident between the teacher and students scaled up to the school she preferred to keep anonymous, as Nuhamin and her peers found out the school leaving exam includes subject matters from lower grades a few months before the exam date. She claims that the school missed providing tutorial classes.

She turned her face to attending short-term courses following the appalling revelation, giving up on the route of formal education.

The wave of abominable results did not hit Nuhamin alone, as only 3.3pc of the students from nearly a million that took the exam managed to score above 50pc. The Ministry of Education revealed entrance points to the universities would not be lowered than half leaving 866,611 students, their parents and guardians dumbfounded.

The figure is less than a quarter of the 152,000 students who joined the 42 public universities as first-year students last year. There are 47 public universities under the Ministry with more than 61 billion Br allocated budget for the year, with an aggregated 33 billion Br covering recurrent expenditures.

The magnitude was far from anticipation by the officials in the education sector as the Minister of Education Berhanu Nega (Prof.) was quoted by the BBC describing the results as “shocking”.

He took the helm of the Ministry a couple of years ago, introducing a stringent exit and entrance examination process, taking the process up a notch and changing exam venues far from the familiar surroundings of students camping on the university campuses for a week, excluding the Tigray Regional State.

The move was made alongside Ethiopian National Educational Assessment & Examination Service, under Eshetu Kebede (PhD), with Authorities claiming it will address the exam leaks and rampant cheating observed in the past.

The institution is responsible for preparing and facilitating the national exams process. The Deputy General Manager, Yilkal Wondimeneh, firmly believes the drastic decline in the number of students meeting the minimum requirement to enter universities is a bitter but real fruit of the strict monitoring and regulation during the exam.

The Principal of Harmony Hill, Mulat Debesh, argues there are many factors that led to the shocking revelation besides that. He said the students would only go to school three days a week during the pandemic and mentioned that travelling and separation anxiety during the exam, leaving students in unfamiliar spaces, has its toll.

Established in 2013, Harmony Hill has 2,100 students enrolled, of which 480 are in high school. Although they are waiting for the official report from the Ministry, 29 students of the 69 examinees have scored points more than half, according to Mulat.

Berhanu absolutely disagrees with the psycho-effect arguments raised.

"They are adults, not kids," he said at a press conference.

Close to 39.2pc of the preparatory schools that had their students take the exam out of the 2,959 did not have a single student join the universities. Principals of the 1,161 schools have a flicker of hope in the midst of the fury that the figure may be lowered when the mismatched results with inaccurate data entry get addressed until Friday last week.

Experts such as Alemayehu Tekelemariam (PhD), lecturer for 30 years in the special needs and inclusive education department, make stakeholders, from the imperial regime to the previous administration, accountable for the "failed" education system.

He observes the lack of a homegrown education system has massively contributed to the failed system. The expert believes the deep-rooted problem started from adapting the westernised education system without thorough examination and associating political ideologies with the education system.

He did not shy away from mentioning the proliferation of 30 state-run higher education institutions in the past couple of decades focused on promoting quantity instead of quality education.