Quality of legal education should not be compromised to provide access-Abotsi

The Dean of the UPSA Law School, Ernest Kofi Abotsi says attempts to increase access to legal education in Ghana should not be pursued at the expense of quality.

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He says reforms proposed by the country’s main opposition party, the NDC, to expand access to legal education, although delightful, may not be the answer to the country’s legal education challenges.

“Ultimately, everyone agrees that the expansion of access must not come at the expense of quality,” he said on the NewFile program on the JoyNews TV channel.

“It is not a question of opening the floodgate. It is not a question of just expanding access. It is a question of ensuring that ultimately the quality standard and quality assurance systems are strong enough to ensure that the rigour and content of the training that is administered meet the standards anywhere in the world.”

Mr. Abotsi also argued that, although previous reforms were done with the best of intentions, they were not implemented in ways that were favourable to law students.

Although he found the NDC’s approach to legal education as having more depth than that of the governing NPP, Mr. Abotsi is of the view that the appropriate mechanisms, metrics and systems of assessment must be established to ensure that as access is expanded students receive the right instruction.

He also noted that attempts to increase access to legal education will come with the challenge of producing the right calibre of legal scholars.

Source: upsa.edu.gh