Students of the Ghana School of Law (GSL) have said they will not partake in a special classes organised by the school for students who have been repeated.

The students who are unhappy with the recent mass failure in the bar examination in a statement said “we do not think that the challenges facing students of the Ghana School of Law border on teaching and learning.

“We are deeply concerned about the conduct and management of our examinations which we believe is partly responsible for the high rate of failure."

“We are equally concerned about the repeat policy which we think is unfair resulting in a large number of students who are struggling to graduate from the school. This unfairness also finds expression in the new reforms that have reversed to the old system of repeating students who fail more than 2 out of 6 subjects in part one and more than 2 out of 4 subjects in part 2. If this policy were to apply fairly then only students who fail more than 6 out of 10 courses should be repeated."

“Besides, the capacity of the classrooms for the special classes is far less than the over 450 students that are required to take the classes."

“Based on the above reasons, we wish to put on record that our petition on the above grievances are before the General Legal Council, Parliament, the Council of State and the President."

“We do not intend to indulge in any act that will be prejudicial to our efforts to seek redress to our grievances."

“We wish to respectfully submit that we have resolved not to participate in the Special Classes pending the determination of the issues in our petition.”

Two weeks ago, students of the school marched to parliament to petition the Speaker, Prof Mike Oquaye, to investigate why only 64 out of about 500 students passed the last bar exam.

A total of 284 students who wrote the professional law examinations in 2018 failed and will have to repeat the programme.

One hundred and seventy-seven have been referred in various papers including Evidence; and Advocacy and Family law.