Some of the students
Some Bachelor of Law (LLB) graduates and students of the Ghana School of Law have taken to the streets to protest against what they term as ‘mass failure of students who take the entrance exams to the law school annually’.
The students are demanding, among other things, a total scrap of the entrance examination of the law school, and the abolishment of a ‘Repeat Policy’ at the School of Law to allow for students to resit any examinations that they fail.
The protest, which began in the early hours of yesterday, started on the premises of the law school at Makola, Accra, to the Law Court complex.
They then took a turn at the Accra Divisional Police Headquarters to the ministries area where they presented a petition to the Attorney General’s Department before moving to the Jubilee House.
The students made stops at some strategic locations such as the Ghana Bar Association offices at Ridge to seek audience with members of the association.
At the Jubilee House, the protesters were resisted by the police from converging on the forecourt of the Presidential Palace. According to the police, the protesters did not have the permission to converge on the Jubilee House.
Mass Failure
There has been mass failure by students who sit for the entrance exams to the Ghana Law School annually.
This year, only 128 out of 1,820 LLB graduates who sat for the exams passed to get admission to pursue the professional law course.
The Supreme Court in 2017 declared as unconstitutional
the entrance examination and interview session used in admitting students for
the two-year professional law course.
These requirements, the court held, were in violation of the Legislative
Instrument 1296 which gives direction for the mode of admission into the only
school offering professional law course in the country.
Meanwhile, the Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo, who chairs the General Legal Council, has insisted that the existing systems and structures for the training of lawyers in the country would not be changed despite the public outcry.
By Nana Kwasi