Why many LDC students fail the Bar Exams

Calls for investigation as 90% fail bar course at LDC - Nile Post
The main gate of the Law Development Center

The Law Development Centre (LDC) has recently attracted public debate due to the massively alarming number of students that failed the bar exam. The majority of the people attributed these alarming failures to the lack of pre-entry exams at the LDC, leading to the admission of students that are rather incapacitated to do Law.

Besides that, there are more causes of the failure of students at the LDC and they include the following;

1. Large student numbers

Due to the credibility of the LDC, there are huge numbers of aspiring lawyers that have come to attain their education accolades from there.

However, a large number of students increases the probability that a large number will fail.

Also, lecturers find it somewhat hard to accord enough time to all students equally, making it hard for the academically struggling individuals to get assistance.

2. Loose entry requirements

For every university, looking at the pass slips is not enough to conclude on the student’s capacity to perform. This means there has to be tests like;

  • Pre-entry test
  • Mature entry test
  • SAT test

Tests like these have been widely embraced in developed countries as a yardstick to determine whether students are worthy of a vacancy in the institution. These tests help in the following ways;

  • They make the course seem more valuable to the students
  • Highlighting what the course will be all about
  • They impart the ethics of study and concentration that entail the course.

All we have to agree on here is, no student looks at any course similarly after they’ve done a test, regardless of whether they have passed or failed.

3. Poor follow up system

Unlike elementary school, university or any tertiary institution doesn’t really care much about students that are lagging behind.

This might be okay in other areas of study, but law is task- oriented and requires a lot of reading. This means that being left out on one thing is almost equivalent to being left out on everything.

4. Many students are not so enthusiastic

Some students are not passionate about law, and are probably at LDC because their parents insisted, or because that’s the only way they can satisfy them.

However, keeping up with a course like this one where you are surrounded by books, requires you to be really passionate about it.

5. Financial challenges

Listed as one of the challenges that students faced in 2021 during the aftermath of Covid-19, financial challenges led to poor performances of many students.

Students who pay their own fees, are usually robbed of the time to concentrate on the course. And being book oriented, it is easier to fail.

Also, students tend to feel stressed, anxious or depressed in the face of financial challenges, and this is also a hindering factor in their academic performance.

6. Low intellectual capacity of some students

Much as many people say that hard work can get you anything in life, you just can’t ignore natural factors.

Having a low capacity to understand and comprehend a couple of things in their course, puts some students in a bad position.

It therefore boils down to testing these students before admitting them to the institution in order to make sure that they are eligible.

7. The Covid-19 Pandemic.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic that made its first appearance in 2020, so many people in the education sector including teachers, students, school administrators and parents were all affected. As for law students, this is how they were affected;

  • Limited time at school since they were closed for longer than they were open.
  • Challenges coping with online education.
  • Scarcity of money for students that were financing their own education. This robbed them of most of the time they should’ve spent reading.
  • Some students tested positive with Covid-19.

Many people actually believe that the number of failures recorded in 2020 and 2021 is largely due to the pandemic.

Conclusion;

Law is one of, if not the most bookish subject at the tertiary level. This means every law student needs to prioritize study above anything and everything else. Therefore, any problem or issue that distracts a student or significantly reduces the time they spend studying, can highly risk their failure.

Recommendations;

Students should make sure that their funding is secured as soon as they step into law school – and that’s only if their goal is to excel.  If you have sponsors, then all you have to do is focus. But if you’re the one to carry your own cross, you better collect enough money first.

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