LAWMAKERS ON the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs have expressed worry about what they describe as the worsening performance of professional law students in the new professional law courses examination.
The Committee made the observation in its report to Parliament on the petition submitted on Wednesday, March 4, 2019.
It said “an analysis of official results of the professional law examinations reveal an exponential drop in the performances of students under the New Professional Law Course which started in 2016.”
According to the report, “prior to the introduction of the new professional course, the average performance of students in the professional examinations stood around 70% but that reduced sharply under the new professional law course to about 15%.”
The report was signed by Ben Abdallah Banda, Chairman of the Committee and Benjamin Tachie Antiedu, Assistant Clerk to the Committee.
It would be recalled that on Tuesday, March 4, 2019, a group of immediate past professional law students of the Ghana Law School submitted a petition to the Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Aaron Mike Ocquaye.
They sought a review of the results of the 2018 new professional law course examinations.
The Speaker subsequently referred the petition to the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs for consideration and report.
The Committee according to the report “noted that the performance has fallen sharply from about 68% prior to 2016 to 12% in 2018, and feared that the trend would continue if urgent measures are not taken to reverse the trend.”
Recent results from the school of law, 284 students who took the professional law exams last year are to repeat the entire program because they failed.
An additional 177 were referred in various papers.
The students failed mostly in Family law, Evidence and Advocacy.
Only 64 students were reported to have successfully passed the exams which had papers
including Criminal procedure, Civil procedure, company and commercial practice, law practice management, legal accountancy, evidence and interpretation, Conveyancing and drafting.
The affected students protested the results, hence their decision to petition the Speaker of Parliament to intervene in the matter.
But the report added that “in view of the massive failure recorded in the 2017/2018 new professional law course examinations , the Committee recommends to the GLC to consider undertaking the following actions: reducing the current re-marking fee from Ghc 500 to Ghc 300; re-opening the period for remarking to enable the students who could not apply for the remarking to do so; adopting off-site marking retreat to ensure speedy remarking of scripts.”
It further recommended that “making all marking schemes and examiners’ reports available to students and lecturers of the GSL; and the IEC to consider holding supplementary examinations for all referred candidates in the 2018 professional law course examinations in a timely manner to ensure that successful candidates are enrolled in this year.”
In considering the petition, the Committee met with the executives of the law students, lecturers of the Ghana School of Law and the General Legal Council (GLC).
During its deliberation, the report indicated that the Committee referred to the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the Standing Orders of Parliament, the Legal Profession Act, 1960 (Act 32), the Legal Profession (Professional and Post-Call Law Course Regulations, 2018 (L.I 2355).
BY Melvin Tarlue