Ms. Irene Ansa-Asare, Rector of MountCrest University College, says it is time for Ghana to change its approach to legal education for the sake of the country’s future. And the time for that overhaul is now.
Speaking at the College’s 7th Graduation ceremony in Accra on Saturday, 19th October, 2024, she said “the entire system of legal education is in need of a complete overhaul. This is a cry that has been echoed by academics, students and other stakeholders for years and it is time for our policymakers to not only listen but also to take decisive action. The first step, in my opinion, is to scrap the entrance examination to the Ghana School of Law immediately.”
That examination, she said, “creates a danger of taking away the focus of law faculties from training ethically responsible graduates with a strong sense of good governance and social justice to rather focusing solely on strategies aimed at passing the law school entrance examination at the end of the LLB and in effect produces walking encyclopaedias. This approach is insular and regressive and does little to contribute to the socio-economic needs of the country.”
In all, 86 graduands graduated with three of them obtaining First Class Honours. They were the first set of students admitted during the COVID pandemic. The ceremony was under the theme “Empowering Minds, Charting New Paths: Shaping the Future with Knowledge and Integrity.”
Ms. Ansa-Asare underlined the importance of having law graduates who appreciate the importance of ethics, strong research skills in knowing where to find the law and producing more knowledge, and strong practical critical thinking and analytical skills. “We should not be training students towards a goal of passing an entrance examination, we should be empowering minds and preparing graduates who are fit-for-purpose in the development of our dear nation.”
The second step, in her opinion, was to overhaul the curriculum in terms of both content and pedagogy, calling for a shift away from, what is in effect, dumping information on students and requiring them to regurgitate that information during examinations to empowering the minds of students to become catalysts for the development of the country.
Ghana, she said, “can no longer afford to have graduates that are not empowered to lead. We need leaders who have been imbibed with values of integrity and service to the nation and that starts with the quality of education that they receive.”
She also called on the authorities to open up legal education so that as many lawyers as needed for the country would be educated, noting that one only needed to consider the human resource needs of the Attorney General’s Department and the Legal Aid Commission to appreciate how under-resourced the country is when it comes to the provision of legal services.
Ghana, she said, “is also very well placed to internationalise our legal education and train lawyers for the rest of the common law world. Rather than build on our unique position to create a legal education hub in our sub-region to attract international students, we are turning our own graduates away and they are in turn looking elsewhere like The Gambia, Nigeria, and the UK for their professional studies.”
She advised that rather than sending out foreign currency in the form of international student fees for our own graduates who wish to qualify as lawyers but are forced to seek alternative routes to qualification, Ghana creates the opportunity to earn that much-needed foreign currency here through the provision of legal education. Therefore, she appealed to policymakers to engage with stakeholders on the subject of reforming legal education and create empowering minds and chart a new path.
On MountCrest graduates pursuing the professional law course at the Ghana School of Law, Ms. Ansa-Asare was happy that they had consistently acquitted themselves creditably. The first batch of 29 students admitted to the Law School in July 2014, scored a 100% pass rate, with all 29 being called to the Bar at first attempt. Subsequent batches have also performed exceptionally since then, with a number of them winning coveted prizes along the way.
“I am especially proud to announce that three of our young faculty members, all alumni of MountCrest, and all recipients of our Founders’ scholarship during their time here, were called to the Bar on 11th October, 2024. Michael Ofosu Duodu, William Ansa-Otu and Anita Nartey, we are incredibly proud of you. The sky is the limit for you,” she said.
On behalf of the Founders of MCU, she acknowledged the superb contribution of MCU’s mentoring institution, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and expressed gratitude to KNUST for guiding the young institution in the provision of quality education from the day of its birth and still continuing.
The Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Prof. Rita Akosua Dickson, was represented by Prof. Kabila Abass, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University, who conferred degrees on the graduates.
Earlier Mrs. Helena Ansa-Asare, a co-founder of MCU, acting on behalf of the Chairman of the MCU Council, constituted the Assembly and also dissolved it after the event.