Pupils in Ethiopia's Tigray region are taking their primary school leaving examination for the first time since war broke out in the region in 2020.
The start of the examination on Wednesday is seen as a significant milestone, not only for the children whose education was shattered by the deadly conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, but for the country as a whole.
Before the violent disruption, about 124,000 pupils registered for the Grade 8 examination to complete their primary school, the Tigray Regional Education Bureau said.
But only about half of those eligible are actually taking the examination in 1007 schools across the region.
The significant drop in the numbers is attributed to massive displacements of communities and continued closure of schools as well as remnants of insecurity in some areas, Kinfe Fisha, the Director of the Educational Assessment and Examination Agency in the region, told Addis Standard newspaper.
Inaccessible
The Regional Education Bureau had declared the reopening of schools in May following the return of relative peace.
The Ethiopian federal government had signed a peace deal with Tigrayan rebels last year to end the two-year conflict which killed thousands of people and displaced millions.
But Kiros Guesh, the Interim Administration Head of the Education Bureau in Tigray, has disclosed that 552 schools remained ''inaccessible'' because the security situation was still volatile.
He told journalists last week that more than ''77% of schoolchildren'' in Tigray were out of school. Only 23% of the region's 2.4 million students had managed to return to school after the war.
