Parliament passes motion directing GLC to admit 499 Makola candidates

The Parliament of Ghana, on Friday, October 29, voted to direct the General Legal Council, (GLC) runners of the only professional school of law, to admit some 499 candidates failed as a result of previously unknown examination rules.

Sitting in for Speaker Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, First Deputy Speaker Joe Osei Owusu declared that the motion to compel the GLC was adopted after there was no vocal opposition to a thunderous aye from lawmakers present.

“The Ghana General Legal Council is hereby directed to proceed and admit all the students who passed in accordance with the advertised rules of the examination,” Deputy Speaker, himself a legal practitioner, declared.

The motion to compel the GLC to admit the 499 candidates was birthed by a petition presented to the legislature by protesting law students and legal practitioners on October 20.

The protest organised by the National Association of Law Students (NALS) dubbed ‘Red Wednesday’, accused the GLC of intentionally failing a chunk of the candidates because of a new quota system.

The controversies over the mass failure in the Ghana School of Law entrance exams were as a result of the GLC’s decision to apply a new rule requiring candidates to obtain a pass of 50% in each of the two sections, namely A and B.

Hitherto, candidates needed just 50% in the entirety of the exams to gain entrance to the School of Law. But the new rule, which was communicated only after results had been released, means that a candidate can make more than 50% in the entirety of the exams and still not gain entrance.

The new system led to the failure of the 499 candidates who sat for the 2021 examination. The affected candidates have since been agitating and calling on the council to rescind its decision.

Clad in red and black attire on the morning of Wednesday, October 20, at the Black Star Square, the protesters were seen holding placards with inscriptions amid drumming and chanting.

Some of the inscriptions were “Stop traumatising law students, we did not fail”, “It’s not a crime to study law in Ghana”, “We are just being frustrated”, “Legal education is not a family’s property”, and many more.

The demonstration was also to demand reforms to the country’s legal education.

Legal education in Ghana has been fraught with a lot of misgivings on the part of hopeful legal practitioners who have complained of so much, from fees to admission into the Ghana School of Law, the only school that teaches for certification of lawyers in Ghana.

Two years ago, while failed candidates protested in Accra against how their examination was graded, they clashed with police who unleashed tear gas, warning shots and water canons.

This year, two thousand and thirty-four (2,034) Ghana School of Law entry candidates who sat for the 2021 entrance exams failed to enter into the country’s only institution for training professional legal practitioners.

Of the 2,824 candidates, only 790 students, representing 28%, passed the exams. The figure is a 10% drop from the total number of LLB candidates who passed in the previous year. Last year, 1,045 out of 2,763 students passed the 2020 exams.