Partners built Abichikili High School in 2016 in response to the desperate need for a high school in the South Achefer Woreda. The woreda had 58 elementary schools serving 69,539 students, one general secondary school (Grades 9-10) and one comprehensive secondary school (Grades 9-12). The grade 9 and 10 classes averaged 75 and 66 students respectively, and grade 11 and 12 averaged 58 and 57 respectively; the two schools accounted for only 7% of the total student population. Many students were not able to attend because of distance to the schools, health related issues, and having to work at home. Students who did attend had very poor achievement results on national exams in the past few years, largely because of the overcrowded classrooms and the poor quality of teaching. The new school that we built has been so successful that many new students have enrolled, to the point where a new four room classroom structure had to be added in 2019. In 2021 a pilot project to bring solar power and interconnectivity to the school was begun in collaboration with the Basic Internet Society. It is hoped that in 2022 internet capabilities will be available throughout the school.

Progress

The reasons for the disproportionately high female failure rates that occurred prior to our intervention are being investigated and remedial action worked on. All of the teachers, principals and supervisor have attended regular teacher training workshops and follow-up is ongoing. We have not been able to implement measurement metrics for the high school as yet, but evaluation of the teachers by our Education experts has produced very encouraging results.

The greening and gardening program is ongoing. Getting water to the school has been a particular challenge because of the distance from the nearest source, however, in May 2019 we finally managed to bring it into place.

As described in a separate section, the interconnectivity project at Abichikili seems to be producing promising results.