Gloria Afua Akuffo C
The Attorney General, Gloria Afua Akuffo, has disclosed that a committee has been set up to investigate the mass failure of students in the Bar Examination in the Ghana School of Law.
The committee tasked by the Genera Legal Council (GLC) is expected to meet this month and submit a report on its findings for consideration.
Speaking to Accra-based Citi FM, Ms. Akuffo said the committee is expected to consider the issue from the perspective of students, lecturers and examiners and prescribe solutions.
She bemoaned the mass failure that hit the school in the past years which must be investigated to find out the real causes.
“When the matter came for consideration at the General Legal Council, the General Legal Council decided that a committee will be set up to find out the real causes,” the Attorney General stated.
Parliamentary Committee
The GLC committee’s probe comes at a time the Student Representative Council (SRC) of the Ghana School of Law met the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs over the mass failure at the school.
Representatives of the GLC, law lecturers as well as the Director of the School, appeared on the scene after the Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Aaron Mike Oquaye, referred a petition by the student body to the select committee.
Issues raised by the SRC included cancellation of questions that fell outside the course manuals, remarking and re-collation of results of all failed scripts, including that of Post-Call students, abolishment of remarking fee of GH¢3,000 per script on grounds that it does not conform to the fee and charges regulations.
Others include a review of the repeat policy, access to actual exam marks, unavailability of marking schemes and examiners’ reports, among others.
Representatives of lecturers corroborated the issues raised by students that the system had broken down and had to be fixed. They also raised issues about the reputation of lecturers given the high failure rates.
The Chairman of the Committee, Banda Ben Abdallah, assured students that given the limited time, the Committee would ‘hopefully’ complete its report and present same to the plenary to take final decisions on the issues.
Mass Failure
The SRC’s petition was occasioned by the mass failure in the Bar Exams in the school this year- the largest in the history of the school.
Out of 465 who sat for the Bar Exams by the Independent Examination Committee (IEC) of the General Legal Council (GLC), only a paltry 64 of them passed, representing nine percent, with as many 284 students repeating the entire academic year.
Out of the figure, another 177 students have been referred to rewrite the exams.
The figure represents a sharp drop in the percentage of students who passed the examination last year – 18 percent.
By Gibril Abdul Razak