Student registration rises across the Amhara Region for the 2026/2027 academic year, but severe infrastructure deficits and destroyed facilities threaten full-scale learning
By Staff Writer
(Nairobi, Kenya) — Student registration across the Amhara Region has improved for the current Ethiopian Academic Year 2026/2027 compared to the past three years, according to regional education data. However, local civil society leaders warn that severe infrastructure deficits and destroyed facilities continue to threaten the resumption of full-scale learning.
In an official declaration issued following the start of the national school calendar, the Amhara Region Civil Society Organizations Council stated that while enrollment figures have shown positive momentum, hundreds of local schools remain unfit for classroom instruction. Many educational facilities across the region were damaged, looted, or repurposed as temporary military camps during multi-year armed conflicts, leaving public school systems ill-equipped to absorb returning students.
The Council highlighted that prolonged instability over the past three years has severely disrupted primary and secondary education for millions of young people across the regional state. During the preceding 2025/2026 academic year, only 4.3 million of an estimated 7.4 million eligible school-age children successfully registered for classes.
The figures reveal that nearly 3.1 million children remained out of school or unregistered during the last academic cycle alone—a metric that excludes new cohorts of school-age children entering the educational system for the first time. Human rights advocates and regional civil society representatives emphasize that extended educational disruption severely harms long-term literacy rates, academic development, and youth economic prospects across northern Ethiopia.
Although academic activities officially commenced across Addis Ababa and regional states on September 15, 2026, community leaders stress that sustainable learning conditions require immediate structural intervention and resource mobilization.
The Amhara Region Civil Society Organizations Council called on domestic and international non-governmental organizations, private investors, religious figures, community elders, and federal policymakers to coordinate urgent relief efforts. The Council urged stakeholders to prioritize physical school reconstruction, facilitate the delivery of basic teaching materials, and restore destroyed classroom infrastructure so that schools across conflict-affected zones can operate at full capacity.
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