Education in Ethiopia was oriented toward religious learning until after World War II, when the government began to emphasize secular learning as a means to achieve social mobility and national development. By 1974, contempt efforts by the government to improve the situation, less than 10 % of the total population was literate. There were several reasons for this deficiency of progress. According to Teshome G. Wagaw, a former educator at Haile Selassie I University, the primary failure of the education system was its inability to "satisfy the aspirations of the majority of the people and to prepare in any sufficient way those passing through its ranks." Teshome described the system as elitist, inflexible, and unresponsive to local needs. He was equally critical of the distribution of educational opportunity, which favored a few administrative regions and urban centers at the expense of a predominantly illiterate rural population. The education system also suffered from insufficient financing.

In the early 1990s, the problems Ethiopians faced in making their education system responsive to national needs remained formidable. Social and political change had affected many orthodox elements of national life, but it was too soon to predict what effect the changes would have on the progress of education.

Education has expanded considerably since 1952, when only 4 % of the adult population was literate. Since then, many schools have been opened, and several teacher-training schools have graduated numerous teachers. A major program to increase literacy was started in 1979; but by 2001 only 55 % of the adult population could read and write. Although free education exists from primary school through the college level, regular school facilities are able to enroll only 43 % of the children of school age. In the 1995 school year 3.4 million students attended primary schools run by the government and religious groups.