Parliament approves remarking of failed Law Exam Papers;reduces remarking fee from GHc3,000 to GHc500 for students

Parliament has asked the General Legal Council to reduce the current remarking fee from GHc3,000 to GHc500 for students of the Ghana School of Law.

The Council has also been asked to re-open the period for remarking for the failed students of the Ghana School of Law who couldn’t register to do so.

The law students petitioned Parliament over what many have described as the School’s worst exam performance yet.

Only 64 out of the 525 students who sat the exam passed, while 284 of them failed and 177 referred.

After consideration of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee Report, MPs have also asked the General Legal Council to hold supplementary exams for all referred candidates.

Parliament wants the supplementary exams to be conducted in a timely manner to ensure that successful candidates are enrolled this year.

While the Council is also to consider adopting off-site marking retreats to ensure a speedy re-marking of scripts, it is also to consider making marking schemes and examiners’ reports available to both students and lecturers of the Ghana School of Law.

The Speaker of Parliament directed that the report should be transmitted to the Council and other stakeholders at the School of law “for appropriate action.”

Meanwhile, some Members of the House want more concrete action from the House.

The Binduri MP, Robert Kuga-nab Lem said some of the purported discrepancies in papers marked were unacceptable.

“There is no reason why somebody can fail a paper with 23 percent and remark results see him passing with 76 percent…We should not be massaging and pampering people in authority and power who are quite irresponsible.”

While the students are happy with the Parliament’s action so far, with Nana Fredua Agyeman, the President of the Student Representative Council saying “most of our concerns have been addressed.”

He expressed hope that stakeholders would come together “to bring a lasting solution so that the review of Act 32 will reflect what we are looking for as a student body and what will help free education in Ghana.”