Lecturers of the Ghana School of Law on Tuesday clashed with the General Legal Council over the administration of examinations at the law school.

At an academic board meeting held on February 26, the lecturers, made up of Justices of the Superior Courts and other seasoned lawyers expressed anger over the 2018 law examination results released by the Independent Examination Committee.

The results, released this year, saw a huge number of students flunking.

The academic meeting ended inconclusively and was adjourned to Thursday, February 28, a source disclosed to Myjoyonline.com.

The 2018 results, which are the worst in the history of the law school, saw as many as 284 out of 450 students failing in the professional law examinations.

The results released by the Independent Examinations Committee of the GLC also saw 177 students referred in various papers. Any student who wishes to apply for remarking is expected to cough up a whopping GHS3,000 ($556) per paper.

Only 64 students, representing only nine per cent of the total number of students, passed the exams.

Also, out of the 10 subjects taken in the exam, students who fail three subjects are deemed to have failed the entire course and are required to repeat the whole course and write all ten papers again. And a ‘C’ is a failed mark. 

The Independent Examination Committee, the examiners, operates separately from the lecturers – a system some lawyers and law lecturers have criticised as problematic. 

Opponents say a better arrangement would be that the lecturers themselves set questions and provide marking schemes for questions to guide the Examination Committee during marking. 

The law lecturers want the General Legal Council to cause the Independent Examination Committee to take a second look at questions in the 2018 exams which were not within the manuals.

The source says the Committee, which sets questions and marks the entire examination, has not been able to provide a marking scheme for some of the questions students answered in the last examination.

The law lecturers are also unhappy about what seems to be the Examination Committee’s deliberate attempt, for two years, to fail students in the bar exams.

Last year, only 18% passed the main exams.

For the Post-Call exams – which are the qualifying exam for lawyers in other countries who want to practice in Ghana – only 21% passed.