Nicholas Adjei addressing the media
Students of the Ghana School of Law have called for a re-marking of their 2016/2017 academic year Bar examination papers which they are said to have failed massively.
The examination results, which were released on Tuesday, February 20, 2018, saw as many as 295 out of the about 560 students having to repeat the entire course while 170 are to re-sit one or two failed papers, leaving only 91 who passed all the papers.
The situation has generated a steam of anger among students who could not fathom the fact that as much as 85 percent of those who wrote the examination had been disqualified from being called to the Bar.
Speaking at a press conference at the school campus yesterday, Nicholas Anane Adjei, Vice President of the Students Representative Council (SRC) of the Kumasi campus of the school, described the results as “pathetic and regrettable.”
According to him, the circumstances surrounding the marking of the exam papers and the release of the first and second semester examination results – which took more than six months – were questionable, bringing its authenticity into disrepute.
“We are convinced that the absence of transparency in the setup and the conduct as well as the marking and its subsequent release make the results not a true reflection of the performance of the students in the Ghana School of Law and accordingly, we totally reject the results,” he fumed.
Mr. Adjei has therefore, called on the General Legal Council (GLC) to appoint “independent, credible professional markers” to re-mark all the scripts of the failed students and a feedback given in 30 days as they could not trust the current results.
He also described as “unreasonable and unconstitutional the demand that students make a cash deposit of GH?3,000 per script to be re-marked.
He has called for a drastic reduction in the amount to GH?500 so that students who are convinced that they need a re-marking of their scripts can do so.
Meanwhile, the president of the SRC of the main campus of the school at Makola, Accra, Samuel Gyamfi, has also called for the scrapping of the Independent Examination Board, which foresees the examination of the students.
According to him, it is insulting to think that the lecturers who teach the students are not competent enough to access their performance at the end of the course.
The Independent Examination Board was established in 2013 by the General Legal Council as a result of concerns that some lecturers were favouring some students at the expense of others.
But the SRC president said the board had lost its credibility because since it started conducting exams in the school, it had been confronted with a lot of frustrations.
He labeled it a “failure, waste of our school fees” and called for its scrapping.
Mr. Gyamfi indicated that the SRC would be petitioning the GLC over the matter and called on the students to exercise restraint and stay together.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak