Reach International Center of Education (RICE) is owned and led by a British/Ethiopian couple Andy & Haimi Walter. The idea of RICE was conceived in the early months of 2012 while Andy was working at Bingham Academy (an international mission school) in the Kolfe area of Addis Ababa. He saw the high demand from parents for an education that will not only prepare their child academically, but one which will also provide a solid moral and ethical foundation - developing a child’s character. Haimi and Andy also saw the need to provide quality international education that would encourage Ethiopians living abroad to return to Ethiopia. Ethiopians who live overseas or have been studying overseas with their families are often concerned about the education of their children when returning. We wanted to see RICE provide one contributing factor for Ethiopians to return to their home country of Ethiopia.

With this vision in mind, two years were spent preparing, resulting in RICE becoming licensed as a foreign investors school, able to offer education from Elementary to Grade 12. We started in August 2014, in a small villa house, with 33 children offering classes from Year 1 to Year 4, and employing 6 staff.

Now in our 9^th year, we have almost 570 students up to Year 12 with most classes having double sections. All children are national or Diaspora Ethiopians. We now employ more than 70 Ethiopian staff. RICE will continue to add one Grade a year so Year 13 will be added in the 2023-2024 school year. We are looking forward to having our first graduates in June 2024.

RICE was accredited to use the Cambridge curriculum in March 2017 for Primary and Lower Secondary levels (Year 1-9). With changes in the law regarding education for Ethiopian nationals, RICE pursued becoming a full Cambridge International school and from October 2022 we will be a full Cambridge school up to and including High School (Years 10-13). Our current Year 11 & 12 classes will finish the Ethiopian national curriculum, but Year 10 have started studying Cambridge IGCSE subjects. We are offering 5 IGCSEs at this time including IGCSE English as a Second Language, IGCSE Mathematics, IGCSE Co-ordinated Science, IGCSE Geography & IGCSE History. It is hoped to expand the subjects offered in the future.

We deliberately use Ethiopian teachers. They are familiar with their subject areas and we have started to invest in their training to adapt to teaching the IGCSE curriculum. Training has included taking Cambridge online courses and meeting IGCSE teachers from a Christian international school located here in Addis Ababa.