Vice Chairperson of the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament, Alexander Abban wants the Independent Examination Council (IEC) of the General Legal Council scrapped.
According to him, the detachment of tutors from examiners at the Ghana School of Law is partly to blame for the recent failure among students who sit for the bar examination explaining that the IEC sometimes examines students on areas not taught by lecturers.
His comment comes on the back of recent agitations by students of the Ghana School of Law over the mass failure recorded in the bar examination.
Usually, the Independent Examination Council will set the questions based on the syllabus and mark. We should not encourage that, this is not WAEC, where someone teaches and other person will set the questions and mark”, the said on The Big Issue.
“We now have a lot of law schools in the country so we can even scrap the [one at Makola], so that when say Law school, we really mean Law Faculties. You then allow the General Legal Council to become the only certifying body where they only give out syllabus and come out with modalities for passing the bar, he added.
Last week, 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.
School of Law students petition Parliament to probe mass bar exams failure
Students of the Ghana School of Law have 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 the premises on Tuesday.
President of the Students Representative Council (SRC) of the Ghana School of Law, Kobby Amoah said it is of great essence that failures are investigated and efforts put in place to forestall such situations.
“The results that students obtain at the Ghana School of Law are appalling. Last year, the pass rate was about 18% for the professional law course. For the post-course students, just 7 out of 33 passed. This year, out of about 700 students, just 72 of our mates passed. We believe that this is a great issue of concern that the speaker of parliament needs to set up a commission of inquiry to inquire why there is such a huge failure rate,” he said.
The president also indicated that, the Ghana School of Law would petition the President to have a thorough look at the legal educational system of the country.
‘Law students not to blame for mass exams failure.’
Meanwhile, an immediate past executive of the Students Representative Council (SRC) of the Ghana School of Law, Isaac Wilberforce Mensah, recently noted that the high failure recorded in the final exams was not as a result of a lack of preparedness on the part of the students.
He suggested that the problem was an indication of a problem with the General Legal Council.
“The only new introduction to this system is the people setting the questions and the people who are marking, not the lecturers. So it can’t be the lecturers that are not teaching well. It has to do with the marking. There is something wrong, and it is not the fault of the lecturers as well, because the lecturers would teach and it appears it is not the lecturers that are marking,” he added.
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By: Nii Larte Lartey | citinewsroom.com |Ghana | nlartelartey@gmail.com