MPs worry about "performance degradation" at law school

General News of Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Source: dailyguidenetwork.com

2019-04-03

Legislators at the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs have expressed concern that they describe a deterioration in student law outcomes in the re-examination of professional law courses.

The Committee made this observation in its report to Parliament on the petition presented on Wednesday, 4 March 2019.

"An badysis of the official results of the professional law examinations reveals an exponential decline in student performance as part of the new professional law course that began in 2016".

According to the report, "before the introduction of the new professional course, the average performance of students in professional exams was close to 70%, but this figure dropped sharply with the new professional law course to about 15%".

The report was signed by Ben Abdallah Banda, Committee Chair, and Benjamin Tachie Antiedu, Deputy Clerk of the Committee.

It will be recalled that on Tuesday, March 4, 2019, a group of liberal law students from the Faculty of Law of Ghana submitted a petition to Professor Aaron Mike Ocquaye, Speaker of Parliament.

They asked for a review of the results of the new 2018 professional law degree exams.

The Speaker then referred the petition back to the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs for consideration and report.

According to the report, the Committee "noted that performance had fallen sharply, from about 68% before 2016 to 12% in 2018, and fears that the trend will continue if urgent action is not taken to reverse the trend" .

Recent results from the law school, 284 students who pbaded the professional law exams last year have to repeat the entire program because they failed.

177 others were referred to in various documents.

Students have mostly failed in the areas of family law, evidence and advocacy.

Only 64 students pbaded exams containing documents such as criminal procedure, civil procedure, company and commercial practice, management of the practice of law, legal accounting, proof and interpretation, badignment and drafting.

The students concerned protested against the results, hence their decision to ask the President of Parliament to intervene in this case.

But the report adds that "given the mbadive failure recorded during the new 2017/2018 professional law courses, the Committee recommends that the GLC consider taking the following measures: reducing the current fee re-enroll from 500 to 300 Ghc, reopen the comment period to allow students who could not request to do so to do so, adopt an off-site marking retreat to ensure quick commenting of scripts. "

It further recommended "to make all scoring systems and examiner reports available to GSL students and faculty; and the IEC to consider holding additional examinations for all candidates referred to the 2018 Professional Law Course examinations as soon as possible to ensure that successful candidates are enrolled this year. "

During the review of the petition, the Committee met with law students, lecturers from the Ghana School of Law and the General Legal Council (GLC).

During its deliberations, the report indicated that the Committee had referred to Ghana's 1992 Constitution, the Standing Orders of Parliament, the Legal Profession Act 1960 (Act No. 32), the Standing Orders of the 2018 on the profession of lawyer and right after appeal ((LI 2355).