All over the world, both in the developed and the developing countries alike, the conventional in-school educational system is proving its insufficiency to satisfy all by itself the educational desires of society. Therefore, many countries have begun to supplement the conventional educational system by distance education. Even though distance education began only in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was for long regarded to be an inferior second alternative (scape route) good enough only for students who discontinued formal schools because of academic failure or social misbehavior. Nevertheless in the last four decades, distance education has been recognized and accredited not only as supplementary but also as valid and useful as the conventional system both by the public and educational institutions.

Among other reasons, the most important factors which made distance education a viable educational system are the following. The first factor is the development of new approaches to distance education in the last decades. The new approach was to use a multi way teaching system: correspondence (printed courses), radio and/ or television programs, and occasional face-to-face teaching, etc. This has helped in resolving some of the contradictions of distance education. The second factor is the contradiction in the conventional education i.e., the ever-growing demand for education in the society on the one hand, and the insufficiency of the conventional educational system to meet this demand on the other. Hence, distance education is found to be an invaluable supplementary and especial method to partially solve this basic contradiction.

Like any developing country, Ethiopia is endeavoring to meet the ever-growing national demand for education. Particularly in view of the on-going free market economy in which the class nature of education and its dialectical interconnection with the growth of the productive forces have been genuinely recognized, distance education has a significant role to play as a means to supplement the conventional education and help in spreading education to the masses. Indeed, the educational need of the Ethiopian society is quite great. The following data proves that.

Official statistical data prove beyond any doubt that the conventional in-school system alone is by far inadequate to satisfy the national aspiration for education in Ethiopia. At present, a very large percent of the school age children, extremely large percent of Junior Secondary school age children, and the very large majority of the high school age youngsters and above 80% of the student population who have completed grade 12th do not go to school. These figures indicate that quite a good number of students, for a variety of reasons, drop out before and mainly, after the completion of primary school. Taking into account the high school classroom student ratio, one can conclude, without any serious error, that the conventional educational system does not have the facility to accommodate all school age youngsters. Even if one entertains such wishes as making the necessary preparation to accommodate all school age youngsters in the conventional in-school system in the near future, it is quite evident that this will be beyond the economic capacity of the country.

Therefore, this leads to question whether it is timely to opt the unusual mode of instruction through distance education in the light of its applicability and advantages. Most of the students who gave up their school at various levels due to various reasons, can be educated further through distance education. There is no wonder that such an opportunity will upgrade and consequently increase the productivity of the working section of the population.