By Edzorna Francis Mensah
Ghana School of Law, Students Representative Council has called on the General Legal Council to reconsider its decision to admit 499 candidates into Ghana School of Law in accordance with a legitimate expectation of 50% pass mark.
The student representative body argued that they have finished auditing the raw score of all candidates who took part in the Entrance Examination and they have extracted about 449 students that are equally qualified to be admitted into Ghana School of Law without further delay.
According to Wonder Victor Kutor, the SRC President at the News Conference on the ‘Ghana School of Law Entrance Examination Results and matters arising submitted that, “it is unfair to law students to be treated in such an unfair manner and it goes against all detects of our constitutional democracy. Especially at the time the three arms of Government: The President, The Chief Justice and The Speaker are headed by astute lawyers and we know that lawyers are trained to be the vanguard of the constitution”.
It is against this background “the SRC has respectfully called on the General Legal Counsel to reconsider its decision which we deem unfair, and they must reconsider and admit 449 candidates’ for peace to prevail, “we are keeping our card to our chest.
Mr. Kutor said, he is in talks with the Director Legal Education of the Ghana School of Law to do the needful thing but we have planned a series of actions should they refuse to admit them.
The 2021 Ghana School of Law Entrance Examination saw 28% of the LLB Candidates gain Entrance into the Ghana School of Law, 790 out of 2,824 candidates passed the Examinations, organized earlier this year.
The pass rate is in line with previous years, except for 2020, where 1,045 students out of 2,763 passed the Entrance Examinations.
In 2019, only 128 candidates out of a total of 1,820 passed the Examinations.
In 2017, 500 students were admitted into the School, with 450 students admitted in 2016.
However, there is a new twist to the raging development as the SRC has uncovered a total of 499 candidates who passed but were denied admission, a situation they called on Parliament, the Minister of Justice, and Attorney-General to speak to, since Legal education matters are issues of national interest.
This week, MP for South Dayi and Member of Constitutional, Legal & Parliamentary Affairs & Public Accounts Committees, Lawyer Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor in a piece revealed that “a further release by the GLC of all exams results after public pressure would suggest that 1289 examinees met the minimum pass requirement of 50% in keeping with the known pass standard for all previous entrance exams conducted by the GLC”.
According to him, the fact that the GLC has not explained the propriety of the new criteria, the subsequently released results contain errors, missing Index Numbers and some students who indeed have passed in accordance with the new criteria and yet have not received admissions”, the conduct of the GLC had offended the spirit of openness, accountability, and transparency accustomed to it.
Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor concluded that, that “all 499 students who have passed with the minimum of the predetermined criteria of 50% be immediately admitted without further delay”.
