Parliament has outlined measures to deal with massive failures in the new professional law course examinations at the Ghana School of Law (GSL).

The legislators have ordered the GSL to make all marking schemes and examiners’ reports available to students and lecturers of the GSL.

They have again asked the Independent Examinations Committee (IEC) to consider holding supplementary examinations for all referred candidates in the 2018 Professional Law Course.

The legislators have also demanded that the examinations should be conducted in a timely manner to ensure the successful enrolment of candidates this year.

Other directives were for the GSL to reduce the current re-marking fee from GH¢3,000 to GH¢500; re-open the period for remarking to enable the students who could not apply for the remarking to do so, and adopt off-site marking retreat to ensure speedy re-marking of scripts.

The Members of Parliament (MPs) took the decision Wednesday following the presentation of the report of the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs on the petition by law students seeking review of the results of the 2017/2018 new professional law course examinations.

On March 5, 2019, a group of professional law students petitioned the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Michael Oquaye, seeking a review of the new professional law course examinations, and the Speaker consequently directed the committee to consider the petition and report to the House.

Poor performance

Presenting the report of the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs in Parliament, the committee’s Chairman, Mr Ben Abdallah Banda, said the committee was concerned about the worsening performance of professional law students in the new professional law course examinations.

“It (the committee) noted that the performance has fallen sharply from about 68 per cent prior to 2016 to 12 per cent in 2018, and feared that the trend would continue if urgent measures are not taken to reverse the trend”, he said.

Mr Banda said the Committee had planned to engage all stakeholders in the legal education sector to consider the legal profession (Amendment) Bill 2018 which had been laid in the House and currently before the Committee.

In that regard, he said, the Committee had already received two proposals from lecturers of the GSL for reforming professional legal education in Ghana and would consider same together with other proposals that might be submitted by other stakeholders.