Haimanot Yonas discovered her exam result at dawn last week, squinting at a flickering phone outside the chemistry lab of Bisrate Gebriel International School, off South Africa St., near the church bearing the school's name. The line of digits confirmed that the slight and soft-spoken 18-year-old had earned the second-highest score in last year’s secondary school leaving national exam, the highest among all female candidates.

Haimanot had spent most evenings hunched over textbooks while friends traded memes.

“I always believed I would do well,” she said, breath visible in the cool morning air. “But, I never imagined the score would be this high.”

Her teachers call her methodical. She revised each concept until it felt solid, then hunted for harder questions. Even so, her grade in English startled her.

“Many of my classmates experienced the same,” she laughed.

Haimanot dreams of studying neuroscience, hoping to understand the injuries that war and hunger inflict on young minds and to prove that science can be harnessed for healing, not simply for academic purposes. Her achievement arrived as the Ministry of Education rolled out the most radical overhaul of the exam in decades.

Education officials, including the Minister, Berhanu Nega (Prof.), claim they are determined to stop mass exam cheating. They have moved testing from local schools to university campuses and introduced online sittings to choke off leaks. The Minister argued that the new format compels schools to teach ideas rather than answers, although critics say he has heaped fresh pressure on students already negotiating crowded classrooms, long commutes and patches of deadly conflict that still flare in parts of the country.

Last academic year, 585,991 students sat the exam, fewer than the previous year but still one of Africa’s biggest cohorts. Boarding schools topped the charts with a 71pc pass rate, community schools followed at 51pc. Online testing exploded, with 134,609 candidates taking digital papers, a 23pc jump, though only 21.7pc of them cleared the threshold. Federal education officials pledged to keep a remedial scheme, offering six months of tutoring and a second chance at university entry.

For every Haimanot, there is a Hanan Jamal, a resident of Bahir Dar, a seat of the Amhara Regional State Administration. The 19-year-old refreshed the same website and felt her nursing ambition slip away. The top student at Horizon Academy Preparatory School, one of the private schools that have 30.6pc pass rate, had spent months sketching anatomy diagrams under a dim bulb.

“It felt like the ground disappeared beneath me,” she said.

Students were ordered to unfamiliar lecture halls with little warning and shuffled between rooms. They were asked not to pay too much attention to invigilators, officials who supervise students taking an examination to ensure fairness, prevent cheating, and uphold the rules of the exam, tapping their phones or chewing gum.

In Jimma, the coffee capital of the west, 19-year-old Eyob Adu divided his days between school and two jobs, to support his widowed mother and five younger siblings. He revised algebra by torchlight. His result was also below the passing average.

“Everything I had worked for disappeared,” he said.

Statistics make the pain tangible. Over the past four years, nearly three million high school students have taken the retooled exam. Only about 142,600, less than five percent, scored results for university admission. In 2023/24, more than 1,300 schools registered no passes at all. Last year, that grim tally dropped, but only to 1,249, including 50 where every student passed.

Horizon Academy sent 30 students, and all of them fell short of their tertiary education goals. Eyasu Abera, the school's headmaster, blamed the chaotic logistics.

“Our students felt threatened and intimidated,” he said. “Even our strongest were shaken.”

He drafted counselling sessions, parent meetings and mock exams to prepare the next cohort.

Bisrate Gebriel School, by contrast, treated the change of policy as a puzzle to solve. Of 240 entrants, more than 210 passed. The Academic Manager, Zelalem Demisse, credited relentless feedback, Saturday workshops, and what he called “guidance on behaviour”.