President of the National Association of Law Students, Asare Hassan has admitted that the General Legal Council (GLC) never advertised that that the pass mark for the entrance exams into the law school is 50%.
However, precedents and certain factors convinced them that the pass mark was 50%.
He made this known when he made an appearance on e.TV Ghana’s Fact Sheet show hosted by Samuel Eshun.
“The 50 percent pass mark is not stated. I agree but what is the criteria? If you didn’t state it, no problem. But from what we have seen with the raw marks of the 790 students admitted, the minimum mark was a 50% and the highest we have seen is 84%. But others who also had 50% were denied”.
He added that per what has happened in previous years, there have been videos and supporting documents that prove that some Chief Justices pegged the minimum mark at 50%.
Asare Hassan explained that what changed this time was that the GLC decided to introduce a new quota that requires candidates to pass 50% in each of the A and B sections in the exam, which they as applicants were not privy to.
“Part A is over 40 and part B is over 60. What this actually means is if you had all 60 over 60 and 18 over 40, you have failed but someone who has 20 here and 30 there has passed. That communication did not get to us until they were producing the raw scores and that is what has created this whole problem,” he said.
He added that, anyway, the President’s statement of ‘no space at the Law School’ is a “conceding statement that means that if we had space, we would have admitted the students.”
499 students denied admission to Law School
499 law students did not gain admission into the Ghana Law School despite scoring more than the usual 50% pass mark in the 2021 Ghana School of Law entrance exam.
Despite meeting the 50% pass mark, the school published a retroactive communiqué which indicated that only candidates who scored at least 50% in each of the two sections of the exam were considered for admission.
Therefore, candidates who scored lower than 50% in a section but overperformed in the other section to make up for the weak section, crossed the pass mark of 50% yet were denied admission.
Parliament was subsequently petitioned to intervene and ask the General Legal Council and the Management of the law school to immediately reverse their decision and admit the students.
After parliament directed the General Legal Council to admit the 499 candidates, the Council is still adamant, stating that Parliament has no power to direct them to admit these students.