Flashback: Only 97 out of 600 student applicants gained admission to Ghana School of Law in 1958

Scores of students were left disappointed on Tuesday, 28th September 2021 when the Independent Examinations Committee of the Ghana School of Law published the results of the 2021 entrance exams.

Out of the 2,824 students who sat for the paper, the published list of students who passed were only 790.

In 2020, 2,763 candidates sat for the paper. Of this, just about 37% students passed.

The story was no different in 2019, where only 128 candidates passed out of 1,820 students who sat for the exam. It is instructive to note that this was in the same year then Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo had announced that she would block the “mass production of lawyers” in the country.

Reports of mass failure in law school exams in Ghana have not only been limited to entrance exams. In fact, in 2018, only 91 students out of 474 candidates were deemed to have passed the 2017/2018 final exams of the Ghana Law School.

It prompted protests and a number of press conferences from the student leadership of the school, demanding that an independent body assess the scripts and remark them.

While these issues are fresh in the minds of most law students and prospective law students, there is evidence that it is not a new phenomenon.

According to information on the website of the Ghana School of Law, when the school was officially opened in its temporary premise in the Supreme Court, there were only 97 students. This was disturbingly from a total of 600 students “who were desirous of pursuing legal education in the then young independent Ghana.”

The website adds that within this 600 number of students were “some members of the 1958 Parliament, civil servant, school teachers and senior employees of some commercial establishments.”

Eventually only 9 out of the 97 students who were admitted were enrolled as lawyers on 22nd June 1963. Some of the overall 97 students were reported to have abandoned the course midway.

The Ghana School of Law is the only institution mandated since 1958 to train lawyers professionally in Ghana.

At the recent Annual conference of the Ghana Bar Association, then GBA President Anthony Forson revealed that Ghana has only produced 7,867 lawyers, a revelation that sparked reactions on the micro-blogging platform, Twitter, over the failure of the country to make legal education and access to the profession open to all persons, without the additional challenges that are “artificially created.”

Presently, the Deputy Rankling Member of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs of Parliament and the Member of Parliament for Madina, Hon Francis-Xavier Sosu has asked Parliament to inquire into the results of the 2021 law school entrance exams.

It is generally expected that this probe will commence processes for dealing with the perennial blocks to legal education and the training of lawyers in the country.