Inusah Fuseini Cries Over Mass Failure of Law School Entrance Exams

Ranking Member on the committee of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Inusah Fuseini has expressed worry over the mass failure of students who sat for the law school entrance exams.

He says it is about time government reforms the provision of admitting students into the law school.

Speaking on Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' program, he explained that the process of admitting students into the law school is old fashioned and that the system needs to be reviewed.

He said like other countries who have reformed their law education, Ghana should also decide to transform its law education to enable the country to provide more lawyers to meet the market demands.

He added that it is unwholesome for a country like Ghana to be failing students who should be admitted into the law school.

"Our law system is outmoded and it should be reviewed to suit the trending times of law education in the country," he told Kwame Nkrumah.

According to him the fact that the Ghana School of Law is the only institution that can produce professional lawyers and regulates admissions into the school means that there exist an entry barrier that will ensure mass failures each year.

“When you have only one venue for the purpose of training and that same avenue is there for regulating the standards and admission, that constitutes an entry barrier to the profession,” he said.

He argued that given that the School of Law has very limited resources, it will do all it can to restrict the number of people admitted even if the majority pass the entrance exams.

He said the School of Law must be allowed to operate as a regular law faculty that trains prospective lawyers and prepares them for the required professional exam which should be administered by the General Legal Council.

He said, “Ghana School of Law need not exist as a regulator and a provider of service. Then General Legal Council which has supervisory jurisdiction over the Ghana Law School ought to remain a regulator and hive off Ghana School of Law from its jurisdiction so that it becomes a player in the field like all other players. And the University of Ghana, for instance, can start the training of lawyers from the first year a person enters the faculty until the person is qualified to write the prescribed professional examination to become a lawyer.”

“[If this is done] this whole system of only 7% pass in examination written by 1,280 students will no longer exist,” he added.

The Ghana School of Law has recorded yet another case of mass examination failure only months after a similar one was witnessed which saw more than half of the candidates for the Bar exams failing.

This time around, the mass failure was recorded at the entrance exams.

Of the nearly 1,820 prospective students, only 128 reportedly passed the entrance examination.

Watch interview below