What is being asked
Under the framework, an international school would teach elements of the Ethiopian curriculum alongside its own. The Ministry's term for this is Curriculum Plus. The subjects named in reporting are the ones where the two curricula say different things about the same country: social studies, history and geography.
The second requirement is about who the schools are for. To keep international status, a school would need at least 30% of its students to be foreign nationals. Reporting puts the current figure at 16.7% across the sector, with Ethiopian nationals making up 90-99% of enrolment at individual schools.
21,000+
students in international schools
Capital Newspaper, March 2026
16.7%
of them are foreign nationals today
Against a proposed 30% threshold
95%
of teaching staff are Ethiopian
97% of administrative staff
Where it stands
More than twenty international schools raised concerns jointly, and the Ministry has since talked about easing the schools into it rather than switching the rules on in one go. Education Minister Berhanu Nega was quoted as saying that implementation is inevitable and that the question is how it happens rather than whether it happens.
He also drew a line on mother-tongue teaching, saying that learning in a mother tongue is a right rather than an obligation for these particular schools.
What it means for a school running the year
Whatever the final timing, the practical work is the same, and most of it is record-keeping rather than teaching. A school that has to prove an enrolment ratio needs nationality on file for every student, not on a spreadsheet somebody keeps. A school adding Ethiopian subjects needs those subjects to exist properly in its timetable, its grade book and its report cards, rather than bolted on at the end of the year.
- Nationality recorded per student, and countable without a manual survey.
- New subjects added to the grade levels that take them, with real teachers assigned.
- Assessment planned for the new subjects from the start of the term, not retrofitted.
- Report cards that show the added subjects the way a parent, and a bureau, expects to read them.
None of that is difficult on its own. It is difficult when the answers live in four systems and a filing cabinet, which is the position most schools are in when a rule changes at short notice.
Sources
Every figure and date above comes from one of these. Open them; a story about your child's school is worth checking.