Call for Mandatory Pre-Entry Exams to Improve Uganda’s Law School Admission Standards, Says LDC Director
Dr. Pamela Tibihikirra-Kalyegira, Director of the Law Development Center, advocates for mandatory pre-entry exams as a requirement for admission to law schools in Uganda to improve the quality of legal education. She argues that the current system, where candidates with just two principal passes can enter law school, compromises the quality of graduates.
In order to produce high-quality lawyers for Uganda’s legal system, the Law Development Center (LDC) Director, Dr. Pamela Tibihikirra-Kalyegira, has called for the mandatory introduction of pre-entry exams as a pre-qualification for any candidate to join any law school in Uganda.
Tibihikirra, who happens to be one of the top brains in Uganda’s legal fraternity, having served in various capacities including Dean, Faculty of Law at Uganda Christian University, Director Quality Assurance and Accreditation at the National Council for Higher Education, and Chairperson of Uganda Law Reform Commission, among others, says that the mandatory pre-entry exam at LDC comes too late because any candidate with just a minimum of two principal passes can qualify to study law at the undergraduate level, which contributes to the compromised quality of law school graduates before they head to LDC to obtain a diploma in legal practice.
She noted that the introduction of the pre-entry exam at LDC is another barrier to a candidate since they have already spent their hard-earned money and time during their four-year study at law school.
“My issue with pre-entry is part of what the Attorney General said; it’s coming late. Pre-entry at LDC, you have already spent your four years in law school; you have sold your cows; you have sold your land; you have invested time and effort in getting this law degree. So, to meet yet another barrier is perhaps unfair, but if we do not accept to have that sieving done earlier, i.e., at law school, because now with the law schools, there’s no sieving; two principal passes, whether it’s Luganda, Swahili, Arabic studies, or art, you will get into law school. You will find a law school for yourself. So, the law schools are not going to stop,” Tibihikirra said.
“However, if we think there is value in having this place called LDC, where we go to train our future lawyers, and which so many jurisdictions have come to benchmark, including this very week, then we have to also control what’s happening on the other side, which is the law schools. Because the numbers are not generated by LDC, they’re on the receiving end. Right now, the law schools are taking in anyone, and perhaps as a profession, we need to go back and ask ourselves, how come medicine, engineering, and architecture are not taking anyone, but for us we are happy to have any sort of person coming into law school,” she added.
Some universities in Uganda, such as Makerere, require any candidate to sit a pre-entry exam as a pre-qualification for admission to the Bachelor of Laws. However, some money-minded institutions of higher learning, especially private ones, only require a candidate to have obtained two principal passes at A level.
The introduction of pre-entry exams at the undergraduate level, Tibihikirra said, will lock out certain universities, which she said just dish out first-class degrees to students.
“Now, when you get to LDC, you’re meant to come out with a Diploma in Legal Practice. So, we are training you on how to practice… just applying logic to 2300 applicants who had not sat the same exam, and therefore, if you used CGPA, you’d be leaving out the law schools that are stricter in their marking. And we know them. We know those law schools that are strict. We also know the ones that dish out first classes, and there were several first classes, over 50. So, the most logical thing to do was to apply a quarter, fair or unfair. But that was the most logic and the fairest in the circumstances,” Tibihikirra said.
Uganda’s system has two trainings for lawyers: one at the university level (law school), where students graduate with degrees in law, and the Law Development Center, where a graduate of law is admitted to study and acquire a diploma in legal practice, which is mandatory for any lawyer to represent a client in court.
What is taught at the law school (university), however, is basic ground-breaking and more theoretical, which is why for any lawyer to represent a client in court, they must have obtained a diploma in legal practice from LDC.
