General News of Friday, 23 February 2018
Source: primenewsghana.com
2018-02-23
Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Gloria Akufo
Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Gloria Akufo, has described the mass failure recorded in the 2017 Bar exams as “unfortunate but it is not unprecedented”
The results of the exams conducted the Independent Examination Board (IEB) resulted in only 91 out of 474 students passing, representing 19 percent of the total students who wrote the exams.
Out of the total number of students who wrote the exams, 206 are to repeat the entire course after failing three or more papers. Another 177 students have been referred in one or two papers.
Speaking in an interview on Thursday, February 22, 2018, edition of Good Evening Ghana with host Paul Adom-Otchere, Ms Akuffo said: “Failure of examinations is not pleasant. I had to rewrite my Conveyancing paper when I was performing national service and so I was not even called with my year group”.
The results of the exams have caused an uproar as students on Wednesday, wore red arm bands to protest against the development.
The Student Representative Council, SRC of Ghana School of Law GSL is convinced the results could not have been the true reflection of the exams written by the students.
During a press conference held by the council, Wednesday, to register their displeasure at the results, the law students accused the Independent Examination Board of being solely responsible for the alleged failure of about 465 students out of a total of 560 who wrote the exams.
The SRC president of the Ghana School of law, Sammy Gyamfi who spoke on behalf of the students stated that the Independent Examination Board has failed to address the very problem for which reason it was established.
“The Independent Examination Board has lost its credibility in the law school so much that students had to boycott certain papers. The body should be scrapped completely for our lecturers who are more competent to examine and mark our scripts, then they can be proof-marked by an external body to ensure fairness,”
“The IEB takes delight in failing students, and some members are not even qualified to mark or teach law. If this body was effective, it would not take them 9 whole months to mark less than 600 scripts”, he fumed.
The SRC is, therefore, demanding remarking of all the failed papers with a drastic reduction in the remarking fee from GHS3000 to GHS500.