Law School Examination Leakage Is Due To Ghana’s Poor Education Policy Planning

• A legal education expert, Nii Armah Addy, has put forth what he believes to be the cause of the constant leak of exam questions of Ghana School of Law
• He said because the system deliberately wants to get rid of thousands of students due to lack of space, students have also been compelled to use unconventional methods to pass
• He blamed all the problems in legal education in Ghana on poor education policy planning by people at the helm of education affairs of the country

A legal education expert has said the recent leak of exam questions of the Ghana School of Law has been caused by the deliberate disregard for the law regulating legal education in the country.

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Mr Nii Armah Addy, with think tank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), has said the General Legal Council (GLC), the regulators of legal education in Ghana, seems to have put the Legislative Instrument (LI) 1296 aside in deciding how legal education should be run.

"It is a shame where we are with regards to legal education...the LI 1296, which is the legislative instrument that spells out the qualification for legal education in Ghana, has been crucified by the GLC," Mr Addy told YEN.com.gh.

His comments follow the leak last Friday of the entrance exams questions of the Ghana School of Law, conducted by the Independent Examination Committee (IEC) of the GLC.

The papers leaked on social media platforms hours before the exams was scheduled to be taken on the morning of Friday, September 23, 2022.

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Although the paper was cancelled and rescheduled to a later time the same day, the incident rekindled criticism of the GLC’s handling of legal education in the country.

Because the leak on Friday follows a long history of similar incidents, Mr Addy told YEN.com.gh that students have been compelled to find ways to enter the law profession at all cost because the GLC has not been responsive.

“If you have thousands of people applying, but only a few hundred would be admitted then it gives room for people to develop unconventional ways to enter,” he said.

Poor Education Policy Planning

Mr Addy, a lawyer and author of a book on legal education in Ghana titled, “The Crucifixion Of LI 1296”, said although thousands of lawyers meet the academic and other requirements of the LI, they are still unable to practice law in Ghana because of a warped system.

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He surmised that this troubled system was in turn caused by the country’s poor education policy planning.

“Because if the accrediting body was working in sync with the professional law programme, they would have known that if you have ten universities offering LLB, and a certain number of students coming up, then the space the country has for the teaching of professional law programme was very small.

“So, you have a huge inlet and a small outlet. And this has become the problem. Other than that, it was the case that if you finish the LLB programme and you pass the prescribed exams (at the time it used to be only Legon), you will go straight to the professional law programme,” he said.

Law School Entrance Examination Cancelled And Rescheduled

YEN.com.gh reported previously that the Ghana School of Law was compelled to cancel the Entrance Examination after questions leaked on social media hours before the start of the paper.

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The paper was scheduled to be taken on Friday at 10 am, however, the questions leaked on WhatsApp and Facebook hours before the scheduled time for the paper.

A different set of questions were handed to students and the time moved to 1:00pm on the same day.

Source: YEN.com.gh