The Ghana School of Law students will march to Parliament today March 5, 2019, to petition the Speaker, Prof. Aaron Mike Oquaye to set up a committee to probe the recent mass failure in the Bar examination.
Results of the students released by the Independent Examinations Committee of the General Legal Council indicate that only 64 students out of the about 800 students passed in all papers. Students of the law school in 2018 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.
The SRC President of the Ghana School of Law, Emmanuel Kwabena Owusu Amoah said they strongly believe that the problem of mass failures is not from the students.
“We are petitioning Parliament to form a commission of inquiry into the whole matter. We as students believe strongly that the problem is not from us and we also believe that the problem also does not come from our lecturers because we are being taught by some of the best legal brains in Ghana but we want the serious inquiry into the situation to find out what exactly the problem is"
Lecturers, including Justices of the Supreme and Appeals Courts, together with some seasoned lawyers are livid over the recent School of Law exam results which has been described as the worst Bar exam results recorded in the history of the school.
They have since threatened to resign en bloc over the mass failure.
READ ALSO:We are not happy with the results- SRC President of the Law School
An immediate past executive of the Students Representative Council (SRC) of the Ghana School of Law, Isaac Wilberforce Mensah, recently noted that the high number of failures recorded in the final exams for students of the school was not the result of a lack of preparedness on the part of the students.
Isaac Wilberforce Mensah said the students put a great deal of work into their studies, even before getting into Law School and hence, cannot be accused of lack of effort.
He said 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 stated.
Meanwhile, lecturers of the Law school have given the General Legal Council up to next week to review and collate the exam scores, reduce the exorbitant cost of re-marking from GHc 3,000 to GHC 500 per paper, and to cancel all questions set from outside the course manual.