The Senate has launched parallel investigations into the growing trend of mass failure of students sitting bar examinations at the Kenya School of Law.
The probe follows a petition by Elkana Kitur, a citizen who sought the lawmakers’ intervention to help the "frustrated and depressed students."
It comes in the wake of an uproar by students and legal professionals over the failures.
Last year, only 290 (18 per cent) of the 1,500 who sat the bar examinations passed. The rest, representing 82 per cent, failed the tests.
A task force report released in 2017 showed only 7,530 out of 16,086 students who sat the exams between 2009 and 2016 qualified to be admitted to the bar. That is a failure rate of 53 per cent.
The petitioner claimed that KSL and the Council of Legal Education – which handles the exams – could be intentionally failing the students to pocket millions of shillings paid to apply for remark or resit of the exams.
“Whenever a student fails, he is forced to resit or request for remark, which is charged not less than Sh15,000 per paper thus making the CLE a cash cow, and taking into account that 95 per cent of the students who sat the exams are involved,” the petition reads.
The Law Society of Kenya has also been investigating the abnormal failure of students.
The House, through the Justice and Legal Affairs committee chaired by Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei, will probe the institution’s structures and systems that could be contributing to the mass failure.
The committee will also be looking into the finances of the CLE and KSL. This will be done with a view to outlawing payments of fees for resits and remarking of exams in a bid to block the incentive to fail students.
“The mass failures have caused frustrations and depression to the students who are eager to be admitted to the bar and ready to practice. They have used all their money in resitting the exams,” Kitur said in the petition presented to the House by Cherargei.
Minority leader and Siaya Senator James Orengo, a senior counsel, asked why KSL is failing students who have spent years at the university studying law.
"I wonder why a person who has graduated with first class honours at the University of Nairobi or Dar es Salaam University, or Makerere, should spend three or two years at the Kenya School of Law studying to become a lawyer,” he said.
Bungoma’s Moses Wetangula said it was puzzling for KSL to record such failures when it only teaches students etiquette.
“Students are taught how to run a law firm, how to keep accounts of your clients and how to present themselves in court. So, if you record mass failure, it raises a lot of questions,” he said.
(Edited by R.Wamochie)
