Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), an education think tank, has petitioned the General Legal Council (GLC) to accept 499 applicants who were refused admission to the Ghana School of Law despite passing the 2021 entrance test.
According to Eduwatch, the Ghana School of Law’s decision to deny students access to legal education is unfair and cannot be justified.
It argued that the decision runs counter to the government’s goal of tripling tertiary enrollment by 2030.
It made the comment in a press release published on October 13, 2021.
“This action of the Ghana School of Law contradicts government’s own agenda of doubling tertiary enrolment by 2030 and creating equal opportunities for career progression and skills development as a means of curbing graduate unemployment.”
“How would the Government of Ghana attract more students into tertiary education when graduates from our law faculties, even after passing the Law School’s entrance exams, cannot gain admission to the Ghana School of Law?”
Eduwatch, on the other hand, proposed a remedy to the Ghana Law School if it was limited by physical space.
It demanded that the students be accepted as either in-person or virtual students by the institution.
This is part of the “government’s tertiary education policy,” according to the think group.
“Globally, training institutions have adopted virtual learning systems and technologies to sustain and increase access to legal education in the face of limited physical infrastructure and the COVID-19 pandemic effect. Should there be genuine concerns regarding limited physical space, the Ministry of Education through the various tertiary institutions have enormous experiences in managing high numbers through virtual schooling initiatives, which should never pose a challenge to the Ghana School of Law adopting to admit the 499 students into a virtual school.”
“We call on the Ghana School of Law to admit the 499 students either as in-person or virtual students, in line with the government’s tertiary education policy.”
Meanwhile, the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has requested Parliament in a petition to compel the General Legal Council (GLC) to disclose raw results of applicants who took part in the Ghana School of Law entrance examinations for 2020 and 2021.
NUGS believes only a response from the GLC on the retrospective implementation of the new rules of the exams will resolve the perennial mass failures recorded during the professional law school entrance exams.
According to the union, its own independent checks indicate that the total number of students who completed the 2021 exams is 1,289, not 790, as the General Legal Council’s new rules indicate, prompting it to petition the legislative arm of government.
“We wish to petition your high office to order the General Legal Council to appear before the Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs committee with raw scores of the examinations from this year and last year.”
“Mr. Speaker, we deem it necessary for the raw scores of both the previous year and this year to be examined by the committee because we believe it will demonstrate whether the separation of scores from the two sections existed before the just ended examinations”, the petition read in parts.
Background
With 790 out of 2,824 students clearing the 2021 Ghana School of Law entrance examinations, 28 percent of LLB candidates gained admission to Ghana’s sole school for training lawyers.
The poor pass rate has already prompted demands for legal education reform in Ghana.
According to critics, the GLC purposefully limits people’s access to legal education.
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