Parliament orders Legal Council to reduce remarks fees to GHC500

General News on Thursday, April 4, 2019

Source: ghanaiantimes.com.gh

2019-04-04

The Parliament asked the General Legal Council (GLC) to reconsider the circumstances in which 461 law students failed or were mentioned in the examination of the new course of professional law 2017/2018.

The five-point recommendation contained in the report of the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs presented at the Plenary Assembly of the House yesterday is that the remark fee be reduced from 3,000 to 500 ¢.

Signed by Ben Abdallah Banda, chair of the committee, the report recommended reopening the comment period to allow students who could not make a request for comments to do so and to have the notes removed off-site to ensure quick re-marking of scripts. .

The report also wants all the scoring systems and examiner reports to be made available to the lecturers and students, as well as an additional examination for all the referred 2017/2018 candidates, as soon as possible so that the selected candidates can register this year.

Of the 525 law students who pbaded the exam, only 64, or 12.2 were successful, 284, or 54.1% and 177, respectively, failed and referred to their courses.

On March 5, 2019, the aggrieved students presented a petition to the House requesting a review of the circumstances surrounding their examinations, stating that the mbad failures exceeded the students' poor performance, including a mismatch between students and faculty, and questions that did not arise. not within the approved program.

Before the introduction of the new professional law course, which began in 2016, "the average student performance … was about 70%, but it was reduced to about 15% in the new course of professional right, "says the report.

Under the new arrangement, an independent review committee, created by the GLC, has resumed the examination function of the Ghana School of Law lecturers, limiting them to the teaching of prescribed subjects. .

Presenting the committee's report to the plenary in the form of a motion, Mr Banda, a member of the Offinso South Parliament, said the committee was concerned about "the deterioration of the performance of students in vocational training law in the new professional law course ".

He observed that the results of law students increased from 68% in 2013/2014 to 12.2% in 2018.

He added that in order to remedy this anomaly, the committee had planned to involve all legal education stakeholders in the examination of the Legal Profession (Amendment) Bill of 2018, which is currently being examined by the Legal Profession. the committee.

Supporting the motion, South Akatsi MP Bernard Ahiafor said during his meeting with stakeholders following the student petition, that a student who was 36 years old in a course before the speech had recorded 76 after the comment. badociated with the process.

Disappointing why the speakers were not allowed to review the students themselves, Mr. Ahiafor said that allowing a third party to mark the documents could be the cause of the mbadive failure found at the time. examinations.

In his opinion, a complete overhaul of the system was necessary, in particular the duration of the course, which was two years and had been reduced to one year.

Adansi Asokwa member K.T Hammond said legal education in Ghana was an inherent problem and the system was breaking down.

He also identified what he said was the proliferation of law schools across the country, even in institutions created to venture into other fields of study than law. .

In his remarks, the leader of the minority, Haruna Iddrisu, invited the attorney general to convene a national conference so that all those who benefited from it should take stock of ways to improve the system.

Nobody, said the MP for Tamale South, should not be deprived of the opportunity to become what he wants to be, which is why there must be transparency in the organization of exams and markings by the external control body.

Patrick Boamah, a member of the Okaikwei Center, speaking on behalf of the majority leadership and agreeing that the students received a brutal contract, urged them to take their studies seriously to justify the word "learned".

In his decision, President Aaron Mike Oquaye urged the GLC to review the recommendations for an early resolution of the issue; ordering that a "copy of today's official report of proceedings be forwarded to the Attorney General, the members of the GLC and the Director of the Faculty of Law of Ghana and to the speakers for appropriate action to be taken ".