The National Association of Law Students (NALS) is set to demonstrate on Wednesday, October 20, 2021, over the Ghana School of Law entrance exam failures.
Some aggrieved candidates have been agitating and accusing the General Legal Council (GLC) of being responsible for their inability to gain admission following a new quota system.
For this year’s exam, the rule changed, so candidates had to score at least 50% in both sections.
However, the affected students said the new rule was unknown to them before they took the exam.
In a notice served to the Greater Accra Regional Police Commander on October 11, 2021, the leadership of the Association resolved to hit the streets to demand reforms in the nation’s legal education.
“Some 2,000 law students, graduates and associates are estimated or expected to attend as demonstrators, and the closing time of the demonstration will be 2:00 pm or so soon thereafter as the demonstrators may be addressed by the President, or the Vice President or a bona fide Cabinet Minister other than the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, upon receipt of the petition,” the statement said.
The Association had earlier claimed that 1,289 out of the 2,824 students, who sat for the exams, met the 50% pass mark yet were excluded from the successful candidates.
“There was a clear, very inexcusable exclusion of some 499 candidates, constituting 39% of candidates who obtained this 50% and 18% of all the candidates,” NALS alleged in a statement dated October 5, 2021.
This notwithstanding, “NALS is saddened and notes that this published 2021 success rate would have been poorer, not because students underperformed, but because the original intention was to admit only 550 students predetermined irrespective of the actual performance.”
Meanwhile, there have been calls for the GLC to submit raw scores of students who took part in the 2020 and 2021 entrance exams to Parliament for further investigation.