Grade 6 and Grade 8 exams in Ethiopia: what the 6-2-4 system changed, and how results are checked

A lot of confusion about Ethiopian exams comes from people using the old map. Parents who went through school themselves remember a Grade 10 national exam that decided whether you continued to preparatory school. That exam does not exist any more. Here is the current shape of things.

Ethiopia moved from a 6+2+2 structure to 6+2+4, phased in from the 2019/20 academic year. Under the old system there were national examinations at the end of Grade 10 and Grade 12. Under the new one, the Grade 10 EGSECE was dropped, secondary school became a continuous four-year block from Grade 9 to Grade 12, and two regional assessments were introduced earlier in the pipeline.

The Grade 6 assessment is the primary school leaving exam, and the first formal external checkpoint a child meets. It is regional, so each regional education bureau sets and administers it for schools in its jurisdiction. That is why the paper a child sits in Oromia is not the same paper sat in Addis Ababa, and why results appear on different portals.

Its function is diagnostic more than it is gatekeeping. It closes the primary cycle and gives the system its first comparable picture of whether children can read, write and calculate at grade level before they move into junior secondary.

Grade 8 closes the two-year junior secondary cycle and determines progression into senior secondary. It is the higher-stakes of the two regional exams, and in most regions it shapes which secondary school a student can realistically enter.

Timing follows the Ethiopian academic year, so sittings fall in the June and July window and results follow within weeks rather than months. Reporting on the 2018 E.C. cycle put the Grade 8 result announcement at the end of June 2026, though the exact date varies by region. Always check your own regional bureau rather than a national aggregator.

1. 1

   Find your region's portal

   Results live on regional subdomains of ministry.et, for example aa.ministry.et for Addis Ababa, with equivalent portals for Oromia and other regions. Going to the wrong regional portal is the most common reason a result appears to be missing.

2. 2

   Enter the registration number and first name

   Most portals ask for both, and both must match the registration record exactly. Check the registration number character by character. A single transposed digit returns an empty result rather than an error message.

3. 3

   Use Telegram or SMS if the portal is down

   Regional bureaus run Telegram result bots, and SMS lookup is available. On announcement day these consistently outperform the web portals, which are usually the first thing to fall over.

4. 4

   Download and keep the PDF

   Where the portal offers a downloadable result slip, save it immediately. Portals get taken offline between cycles, and a screenshot taken today is a great deal easier than a certified copy requested in two years.

The reform quietly shifted a lot of weight onto school-held records. With no external exam between Grade 8 and Grade 12, a student's Grade 9, 10 and 11 results exist only in whatever the school keeps. If that is a paper marklist in a cupboard, then a transfer, a fire, a lost ledger or a teacher leaving mid-year takes real academic history with it.

• Continuous assessment for Grades 9 to 11 is the only longitudinal record most students have between two external exams.
• Transfers between schools do more damage than they used to, because the receiving school inherits nothing verifiable unless records travel with the student.
• Grade 6 and Grade 8 results are worth storing centrally per student rather than filed per cohort. You will be asked for them years later.

This is the practical case for keeping marks in a system rather than a drawer. Not administrative tidiness, but the fact that four years of a child's academic record now has no external backup.

This article was last checked on 9 August 2026. Exam windows, fees and policy move, so if you are reading it much later, treat the dates as a starting point and confirm them against the sources below.