Parliament has adopted the report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs on the petition by Professional Law Students of the Ghana School of Law, seeking a review of the 2017/2018 Professional Law Course Examination.
Presenting the report at the Plenary, the Chairman for the Committee and Member of Parliament for Offinso South, Mr. Ben Abdallah Banda, stated that an analysis of official results of the professional law examinations revealed an exponential drop in the performance of students under the New professional Law Course, which started in 2016.
He indicated that prior to the introduction of the new professional course, the average performance of students in the professional examinations stood around 70 percent but that reduced sharply under the new professional law course to about 15 percent.
Mr. Abdallah Band noted that in the petition, the professional law students expressed grief and disappointment over the mass failure recorded in the 2018 New Professional Law Course Examinations conducted by the Independent Examination Council (IEC) in June and October 2018.
The Chairman for the Committee explained that the students emphasised that the factors which caused the mass failure were not due to poor performance of students.
He further added that the law students partly attributed the mass failure to factors such as questions set outside the approved syllabus, disconnect between lecturers and the IEC, and defects in the marking, recording and tallying of examination results.
He informed the House that the law students further complained about late release of results, high cost of remarking and difficulties encountered in the implementation of the repeat policy under the Legislative Instrument 2355.
Mr. Abdallah Banda reiterated that the Committee has already received two proposals from lecturers of the GSL to reform professional legal education in Ghana and would consider same together with other proposals that may be submitted by other Stakeholders.
Deliberations at the Committee level and response from GSL lecturers
Appearing before the Committee, the lecturers of the Ghana School of Law (GSL) essentially concurred with the submissions of the professional law students.
The law lecturers maintained that though they have on many occasions requested the IEC to furnish them with copies of its Examiner’s Report and marking scheme, none of those critical documents have been given.
The law lecturers further stated that the remarking fee of GH¢3,000 was too high and ought to be reduced drastically, stating that the GSL used to charge a remarking fee of GH¢300 in 2015 before the IEC took over.
The law lecturers again noted that the current failure may partly be traceable to the reduction of the professional course from two years to one year, the late release of results as well as non-release of marking schemes by the IEC.
The law lecturers disclosed that in 2015, two lecturers submitted two proposals for the consideration of the General Legal Council (GLC), to respond to the increasing number of students seeking admission to the GSL.
According to the law lecturers, the proposals comprised a multi-campus concept and creation of a professional law Council, but the GLC seemed to have been implementing the proposals selectively.
The law lecturers again revealed that, prior to the current system with the the IEC, the average performance of professional law students stood at 68 percent but that has since dipped to about 15 percent in the last two years.
The lecturers expressed grave concern over the lack of co-ordination between them and members of the IEC.
Response from GLC at the Committee level
Appearing before the Constitutional Committee, the President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Mr. Tony Forson, informed the Committee that the GLC established a Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, to investigate allegations made by the students and the Commtttee was given up to March 25, 2019, to submit its report to the Council for action.
Mr. Forson also informed the Committee that the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee established by the GLC in 2018 to investigate similar allegations had submitted it’s report to the Council.
He further noted that the GLC and the lecturers at the GSL were currently co-operating very well and believed that most of the issues being raised by the stakeholders were in the process of being resolved.
The Committee’s recommendations on subject manual
The Committee took the view that once subject manuals were approved by the GLC and given to the professional law students, the IEC was expected to set the examination questions within the scope of those manuals.
In that regard, the Committee urged the GLC to expedite its inquiry into the allegations and rectify any anomalies that the inquiry may reveal.
The Committee required that immediate action must be taken as early as possible so that any such remedial action may reasonably be taken before this year’s enrolment.
The Committee’s recommendations on late release of examination results
The Committee was informed by the law students and lecturers of the GSL that the IEC continued to release results late, with some as late as two days before enrolment.
In view of the tensions and trepidations students go through as a result of late release of results, the Committee urged the IEC to ensure early marking and release of results at least one month prior to commencement of the mandatory internship.
The Committee recommended to the IEC to consider adopting an off-site residential marking retreat, to ensure speedy marking and release of examination results.
The Committee’s recommendations on re-marking fees
The Committee is of the view that the remarking fee of GH¢3,000.00 charged by the GLC to remark one paper is high and may deny students with legitimate basis to request for remarking.
Accordingly, the Committee implored the GLC to reduce the remarking fee from GH¢3,000.00 to GH¢500.00 and consider re-opening the period for remarking, to allow the candidates who wrote the 2017/2018 exammations to exercise that right.
The Committee’s recommendations on repeat policy
The Committee observed that the implementation of the repeat policy under Regulation 14 of LI 2365 has produced some undesirable outcomes and needs to be reviewed.
Unlike the previous policy which treated the the Part I and Part lI results separately, the current policy accumulates the first semester and second semester results to determine whether a student will be repeated or not.
The Committee again recommended that the IEC should consider organising Supplementary Examinations for all referred candidates in the 2018 Professional Law Course Examinations in a timely manner, to ensure that successful candidates are enrolled this year.
The Committee’s recommendations on marking schemes and examiner’s report
The Committee was informed that the IEC had never given its examiner’s reports to law students and law lecturers since it commenced its operations three years ago.
The Committee considered such default by the IEC quite worrying in view of the usefulness of the two documents to both lectures and law students.
The Committee therefore, urged the IEC to immediately release all marking schemes and examiner’s reports to professional law students and lecturers of the GSL.
The Committee’s recommendations on review of LI 2355
The Committee urged the GLC to initiate processes for the review of the Legal Profession (Professional and Post-Call Law Course) Regulations, 2018 (LI 2355), to provide procedure for the selection of examiners; procedure for the appointment of members at the IEC and compulsory delivery of marking schemes and examiners’ reports to the Academic Board at the GSL.
Source: GhanaJustice/S.Ayisi
