The Coalition for the Reforms of Legal Education in Ghana is calling for an immediate halt to processes by the General Legal Council (GLC) to hold an entrance examination for admission into the Ghana School of Law.
The group is making the demands based on advertisement by the GLC and Independent Examination Board in the Daily Graphic calling for applications from suitable candidates.
According to the group, the action by the two bodies which regulate legal education in the country is unlawful and a breach of a Supreme Court judgment declaring the examinations unconstitutional.
Kenneth Agyei Kuranchie, the convener for the Coalition for the Reforms of Legal Education in Ghana in an interview with Citi News, explained that the idea behind the writing of the entrance exams is discriminatory.
Mr. Kuranchie also bemoaned the new directive by the GLC to request a police report from students before enrolling in the Ghana Law School.
“Currently the operative law is LI 2355, that is the professional law court act that we use today, if you go in there, there are no such provisions, for the provision of the police report before you can be admitted to the Ghana Law School.”
Another point we are raising is that the idea of an entrance examinations is not good, because all across the world, the basic qualification for going ahead to take a professional law course is the LLB.
“Ghana is the only country where we have an entrance examination. We are saying that the concept of an entrance examination means that some people holding LLB’s who are qualified to undertake professional law courses through the process of entrance examinations, could be disqualified and that is discriminatory.”
Background
Students of the Ghana School of Law in March 2019 called on the Speaker of Parliament to form a commission of inquiry to probe the poor results of students who sat for the school’s bar exams.
They made the demand when they presented a petition to Parliament after embarking on a march to parliament.
The law students petitioned Parliament over what many described as the School’s worst exam performance yet.
The results released by the Independent Examinations Committee of the General Legal Council showed that only 64 students out of the about 800 students passed in all papers.
In 2018, students of the school took a series of actions in protest of the Bar examination results which were also poor.
Also, more than 80% of students who wrote the examination in May 2017 failed, as only 91 out of the over 500 candidates passed.