The National Learning Assessment (NLA), carried out every four years by the National Educational Assessment and Evaluation Agency (NEAEA), aims to provide timely and relevant system-wide information on students’ achievement of key learning goals (also mainly in terms of sex, region, and school type) and other factors related to students’ achievement of key learning goals.
Data produced by NEAEA since 2000 (from Grades 4 & 8) and since 2010 (from Grades 10 and 12) were analysed in this study to check the extent to which the above target was achieved.
When the government’s standard is 50 points or above in a scale of 100 by all students, in this study, the overall score of students was found to be far below the standard: more than 50 percent of students have achieved below 50 points (with mean score of 43 by Grade 4, 38 by Grade 8, 47 by Grade 10, and 45 by Grade 12 students). The achievement difference is high in some regions, mainly Gambella, Benishangul Gumuz, and Afar performing the least.
Correlates or factors affecting the achievement of students were not clearly identified as to what they are and how much their contributions are, i.e. the data collection and analysis method used by NEAEA was not set or developed to address this issue. To this end, NEAEA should collect and analyse data that clearly shows the trends and correlates of students’ achievements across years or levels of education.
Given the low level of performance and huge gap among regions, all stakeholders, including the legislative and the executive branches of the government (including different levels of the government starting from the Woreda to federal level educational institutions), the media and other civic organizations should make concerted efforts to reverse the situation.
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