Blame law schools, teachers for mass failure of law graduates - Bagbin

Ghana’s longest serving legislator, Alban Bagbin, says the systematic mass failure in the law entrance exams by law graduates is an indictment on the various law schools and their teachers across the country.

One thousand, six-hundred and ninety-two law graduates from various law faculties in the country who wrote the Ghana School of Law entrance examination this year, failed to make the cut to enable them undertake the professional law course.

Only 128 graduates of the total 1, 820 who sat for the exams passed, sparking agitation among the hundreds of law graduates and students across the country whose fate hang in the balance due to what they termed, a deliberate attempt to deprive of the professional course.

Students of the Ghana School of Law and their peers from the various law faculties in the country announced Thursday they will on October 7 stage a demonstration in Accra to push authorities to open up Ghana’s legal education, which many are struggling to easily access.

Private legal practitioner John Ndebugri laid the blame at the doorstep of students for their use of what he termed computer language and abbreviations that he said do not make sense.

“You can’t speak computer English in law school and pass, you can’t write computer English; I dey do this, I dey do that, using abbreviations which have no meanings,” he told Citi FM.

‘You can’t blame the students’

But asked by journalists what he makes of the mass failure, Mr Bagbin indicated the students cannot be blamed for the failure which has provoked calls for Ghana’s legal education to be opened up.

“This is a clear indictment on the teachers not the students,” he said Saturday, adding “it’s a clear indictment on the school”.



He contended that the failure meant the law faculties and the teachers there “are not teaching them [the students] well” thus resulting in the mass failure in this year’s exams into the Ghana School of Law.

Meanwhile, Mr Bagbin who was speaking on the side-lines of a training programme for the parliamentary press corps in Prampram said he does not agree with the chief Justice that the allowing mass production of lawyers will compromise on quality.

That notion, in his view, is “conservative” thinking which should not be supported.

He observed Ghana currently has deficit in lawyers hence does not understand why those in charge of legal education are not opening up for more lawyers to be trained especially so when there are cries for “certified practitioners”.

Mr Bagbin who is the second deputy speaker of parliament said he would support the establishment of more schools of law in the country to free the Ghana School of Law from the current pressure.