Hon Xavier Sosu petitions Speaker to probe mass failure in 2021 law school entrance exams
A statement released by the National Association of Law Students indicated that the Ghana School of Law had projected to only admit 550 students in page 186 of the 2021 budget statement.
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.
In a petitioned submitted to the Speaker of Parliament, Hon Sosu is urging Parliament to probe the mass failure recorded /
Out of the 2,824 students who sat for the paper, only 790 passed, representing only 28 per cent.
According to the legislator, it is important for the country to understand the reason for this mass failure and constitute appropriate steps towards rectifying them. He noted that Parliament’s inquiry will show if the failures was based on actual lackluster performance or lack of infrastructure to accommodate enough students.
He argued in his petition that “Article 37(1) of the 1992 Constitution provides that the State shall endeavor to secure and protect a social order founded on the ideals and principle of freedom, equality, justice, probity, and accountability as enshrined in Chapter 5 of this Constitution; and in particular, the State shall direct its policy towards ensuring every citizen has equality of rights, obligations, and opportunities before the law.”
“As such, there is the need for investigations to ascertain whether or not the pass rates and scores are based on the actual performance of students during examinations, or as a result of lack of available infrastructure to accommodate the excess numbers, hence this petition.”
Meanwhile a notice purporting to have come from the Director of Legal Education, Mr. Kwasi Prempeh-Eck indicated that candidates had to obtain a minimum threshold of at least 50% in each of the two sections contained in the recently-held exams.
Some students have criticized this notice, noting that they were not informed before writing the exams. They suspect that it may be a deliberate attempt by the Ghana School of Law to fail students.
A statement released by the National Association of Law Students indicated that the Ghana School of Law had projected to only admit 550 students in page 186 of the 2021 budget statement.
As a result, the Association feared that the decision to implement this grading scheme at the blind side of the students writing the exam was to streamline the admission process in order not to burden the existing infrastructure at the school, at the detriment of some extra 499 students who passed the initially agreed 50% pass mark.
Meanwhile, the Association also blamed Parliament for passing the said budget irrespective of the implications currently realized.
