Law students converge at Independence Square to demand legal education expansion
The students are calling for a total expansion of the legal education system
Dozens of students from the various law faculties across the country have converged at the Independence Square in Accra to demand reforms into Ghana's legal education system.
Read full articleThe group is also made up of some 499 students who say they passed the 2021 Ghana School of Law Entrance exams but have been denied admission.
Clad in everything red, the students are calling for a total expansion of the legal education system to among other things give law faculties the authority to offer professional law courses.
Currently, only the Ghana School of Law located at Makola in Accra is authorized to train lawyers and also administer the General Legal Council's Bar exams.
The entrance examination into the Ghana School of Law has over the years recorded mass failures and has caused critics of the legal education system to describe it as a deliberate attempt to limit numbers in the law profession.
The 2021 Law School entrance exams had only 790 representing 28% out of the total 2,824 candidates passing the exam according to results released by the GLC.
However, some aggrieved candidates have since been agitating about the results with some accusing the GLC of changing the quota system for the exam.
According to the candidates, the pass mark for the exam had always been a 50% mark in both sections however the registrar at the Ghana School of Law in a statement stated that the candidates have to score at least 50% in both sections (Part A and Part B).
The candidates say the new scheme is an afterthought introduced by the GLC to deny them admission.
At the back of these assertions, members of the Ghana Association of Law School Students gathered at the Independence Square say they will be marching to the Parliament of Ghana and the seat of the Presidency as part of their protest.
The students will be presenting petitions to Parliament and the President to press home their demands for an open legal education system as well as the "immediate" admission of the 499 candidates excluded from the 2021 entrance exams pass list into the Ghana School of Law.
