Being components of the overall geographic education,rnmapwork skills are means to the deep understanding of thernother components. As a result, geographic education, whateverrnthe level be, can not be complete without the mastery of atrnleast the basic mapwork skills. Review of literature revealsrnthat this fact is duely recognized by professional geographers,rngeography educators and curriculum experts includingrnthe Social Sciences Panel of the Ethiopian Ministry of Education.rnHowever, whether or not students in our schools havernreally developed such skills was not discovered up to thernpresent . This study was aimed at the investigation of thernextent to which students of Addis Ababa developed the basicrnmapwork skills by the time they complete their secondaryrneducation.rnA performa nce test was prepared and administered to 150rnsample students of four government and two mission schools.rnData relating to the overall academic performance of thernstudents was acquired from the record offices of the concernedrnschools. The students also filled in questionnaires meant torngather information about the progress and problems ofiiiteachingrnmapwork skills in their res pective schools. Similarrnquestionnaires were prepared to be filled in by geographyrnteachers of the same schools. Besides filling in the questionnaires,rnGeography Department Heads and two most senior teachersrnof geography were interviewed.rnThe data analysis revealed that the performance ofrnstudents in basic mapwork skills is very low. Most of themrnwere not able to answer correctly even half of the items inrnthe test. The performance of students of mission schools wasrnrelatively better than that of students of government schools.rnThe study also suggested that performance in mapwork skills isrnpositively correlated with students' achievement in mathematics,rngeography and their grand average.rnAmong the factors that negatively affected achievementrnin mapwork skills are found to be the chronic scarcity ofrnteaching aids, shortage of time, unfavourable classroomrnconditions, lack of sufficient knowledge about mapwork skillsrnon the part of the teachers, lack of interest on the part ofrnthe stud ents, and poor content structure of the map-readingrntextbooks being used.