Law school mass failure: GLC urged to implement parliament recommendations

The Students Representative Council (SRC) of the Ghana School of Law is calling on the General Legal Council to as a matter of urgency implement the recommendations of parliament on their petition over mass failure of students in the school.

The students earlier this year demonstrated their displeasure over the number of students who could not pass in their final exam.

The results, as released by Independent Examination Committee of the Ghana Legal Council showed that more than 90% of the 727 students failed the bar exams, a situation which caused agitation amongst the students.

Consequently, the students marched to the parliament house and presented a petition to have the General Legal Council address what they termed as a “systemic problem” at the school of law. Key among their concerns were the mass failure, the fees charged for resit and remarking, as well as the policy of rewriting all papers if a student fails more than 3 papers.

It was and still is the position of the SRC that the results which showed the mass failure did not reflect the academic intellect of the students and that, the situation was testament of a “systemic problem” which they want addressed.

Speaking on TV3 Midday Live, the SRC president, Jonathan Alua, disclosed parliament recommended among other things that the fees for remarking papers be reduced from GH?3,000 to GH? 500 adding that, “most students after remarking find out that they passed instead of failed”.

“It can only tell you that the human error is inherent in the system and so to place a financial cup on who can apply for remarking or not is only making it inaccessible to financially incapable people,” he noted.

According to him, it is not exactly true that the students fail because they do not study. He contends such assertions will be unfair to the students since those who enter the law school are “worth the calling”.

“They have everything it takes to take a professional law course”, he stated.

He reiterated that pinning the mass failure on the students was particularly alarming because, “to enter into law school now you need to literary work your sweat off, you have to take an entrance exam and be shortlisted to get in”.

The students are optimistic that their engagements with Parliament and the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on the issues affecting legal education will yield results.

“We expect that the Independent Examinations Committee takes seriously a lot of the recommendations that have come up of the agitations this year.

“Parliament, we got audience with the President and a lot of recommendations have come out we expect that, particularly those that emanated from parliament will be implemented”, Mr. Alua said.