LDC in new scandal over student marks

Accusations of “discrimination” and “incompetence” have been levelled against the Law Development Centre (LDC) with students from the Kampala campus voicing grievances over last month’s bar exam results.

Copies of internal correspondence, including WhatsApp chats and interviews with aggrieved students, paint a picture of lack of fairness and transparency of the assessment process.

LDC, established under the 1970 Law Development Centre Act, continues to hold a monopoly in providing practical training for legal practitioners. It remains the sole institution offering the postgraduate diploma in legal practice.

Several students from the Kampala main campus claimed the institution gives preferential treatment to their counterparts from the Mbarara and Lira campuses. The Lira Campus has a maximum capacity of about 300 students while Mbarara has about twice as much. Kampala Campus on the other hand has more than 1,000 students.

“During oral examinations, the administration failed to properly group the students across the different panels on time, doing it wrongly at least twice before they could get it right. The administration even had to adjourn the exams by a day due to those challenges,” one lawyer told Monitor.
The lawyer added: “When it came to clerkship, the students filled in their proper information on the system. Interestingly, however, the lists that were shared had names of all students wrongly placed against the rest of their information. In fact we never got a proper list, we were just told to ignore the names and look for our other information.”

Queried
LDC released the highly-anticipated results on February 7. A great deal of the people who wrote the exams were not happy.  
 
“The wait became very painful when LDC decided to first release the results of those who were on the directors’ list by a day, thus causing mental suffering for the rest who were not on the list,” a lawyer, who has appealed results from one of the subjects, told Monitor, adding, “As expected though, they couldn’t release the results at exactly 2pm as communicated, claiming that the Deputy Head of Bar Course had not been granted access to the system on time.”

Several students encountered difficulty accessing their results, compounding the frustration. Reports emerged of missing marks and discrepancies in grading. In internal correspondences as well as informal and formal discussions, students questioned the legitimacy of the marks assigned to them.

When invited to the LDC campus in Kampala, students with missing marks were simply asked to locate their names on the attendance lists and nothing more.
Many students also told us they feel that their legitimate grievances are met with dismissiveness, leaving students feeling marginalised and unheard in their pursuit of a resolution.

The Rules governing the Bar Course 2020, provide that for a person to appeal against a score, they must have scored at least 45 percent in the written exam amongst other conditions as seen in Rule 29. The written exam is graded out of 50. That means a person less than 22.5 out of 50 has no remedy whatsoever, but to just apply for a supplementary examination, which for Category A subjects, would imply they cannot graduate with their cohort, again due to “the rigid nature of the rules.”

Going round in circles
The rules, one affected student said, presuppose a flawless system, but the experience at LDC has proved otherwise.
“While following up on their missing marks, our colleagues mentioned that there were possible scenarios of switching of people’s marks which the administration was still verifying, but interestingly they said that this was for Mbarara and Lira Campuses,” one student said.

Another student added: “We hoped that the ongoing internal reviews would benefit all students, especially in the subjects of Family Law practice and Land Transactions but this afternoon [March 13] we just received a communication from the director that it is results for Lira Campus and Mbarara Campus in the above subjects that was under review leaving out Kampala Campus for whatever reasons”.

The decision disproportionately impacts students from the Kampala Campus who attained scores below 45 percent in specific subjects, leaving them without any recourse. One student from Kampala, for example, received the same marks for orals throughout the five core subjects.

Another student has two missing “Individual Assessments” from the same term. Unfortunately for them, they failed two subjects in Category A and 1 in Category B. If this student got their marks on time, they would have been able to do supplementary exams for Category B and then wait for Category A. But since they have a missing mark, their score is still 44.5 percent so they are not sure if they passed the three (3) required category A subjects to qualify for supplementary exams, or they failed and thus have to repeat a full year.

“The guy has extremely good marks in the other two subjects, [marks omitted to preserve anonymity] but it’s interesting how all two IAs [Individual Assessments] of the same person in the same term go missing. Guy is praying that they can at least get his marks so that he does supplementaries, has benched at LDC but nothing has happened,” a student due for graduation told Monitor about the predicament of his colleague.

A review of marks for a single paper especially for the papers with the most suspicious results (Land Transactions and Family Law practice) means so much to the students since both are category A subjects alongside Civil Litigation, Criminal proceedings and Corporate and Commercial practice.

A student who fails more than two of the above category “A” subjects is deemed to have failed the course regardless of whether they passed the remaining seven examinations. That student has to repeat the entire course while paying full tuition and attending all lectures. A review of the marks in those two subjects, as is being done for Lira and Mbarara Campuses, would therefore mean so much for a student who might have been denied a fair hearing.

In September 2022, LDC increased the cost for the Bar Course for Ugandan and East African applicants by Shs1m from Shs5m to Shs6m. Applicants outside Uganda and East Africa also faced similar increases from $2,400 (Shs9.3m) to $3,000 (Shs11.6m).

Othembi memo
On March 12, Mr Frank Nigel Othembi, the LDC director and chief examiner, issued an internal memo to students. It laid down a timeline of the review process ahead of graduation. The process, according to Mr Othembi, is slated to end on March 26.  
“We intend to … have all changes in final results uploaded and reflected on AIMS by March 30, 2024,” Mr Othembi wrote.

He further said: “A student who passes as a result of the above processes and qualifies will proceed to graduate. The Academic Registrar shall communicate appropriate clearance dates for affected students. Any rights or obligations under the Rules shall apply to the results after completion of processes. Time for doing anything under the Rules shall be computed from the date of receipt of final results. Any money paid for supplementaries by a student whose appeal is successful shall be refunded.”
Mr Othembi’s memo shows that LDC is undertaking an “administrative review” for only Lira and Mbarara campuses for Land and Family papers.

Usually, the advice at LDC is that it is better to apply for a supplementary once a student receives a “failed” mark, than to go through the appeal process since the original outcome rarely changes.
Monitor contacted Mr Othembi and presented him with the issues. He said he was travelling and would respond in two hours. He had not done so by press time.

Kampala bias?
Students Monitor interviewed also allege bias against those who attend the Kampala Campus citing officials who have branded them as party animals instead of reading like colleagues from the Mbarara and Lira campuses.
In January, Mr Othembi revealed that a fourth LDC campus would be opened in Mbale in September.

On March 14, a group of student leaders from the LDC met with management led by Sylvester Wambuga, the assistant director of the Kampala Campus, and Ms Stephanie Lukwanzi, the registrar.
The students’ leaders raised five issues, including the alleged unfair application of review guidelines that allegedly got only Lira and Mbarara’s results reviewed and Kampala left out. They also accused LDC management of discriminatory application of rules where people who allegedly got an audience with the registrar were allowed to verify even with marks less than 22.5. 

The student leaders also alleged mismanagement and unsatisfactory IA review issues where students were only asked to write their names, index numbers and booklet numbers as copied from attendance lists without showing them the scripts. They also questioned the continued reflection of “0” on the system even after the review process and the refusal to allow students with more than two supplementary papers in Category A to verify even when they scored 22.5 in the exams in all the failed subjects.

When contacted to clarify on the LDC response to the student leaders, Mr Wambuga said: “This is a proper statement of facts and I applaud my students leaders for always taking the initiative to find information and relaying it to their colleagues without manipulation.  I however still advise that you get in touch with our SPRO (Senior Public Relations Officer) for the official position.”

LDC response
All results for all campuses were comprehensively reviewed. No general issue was found in regards to all Kampala campus results. Mbarara and Lira had mishaps here and there, including uploading results under a wrong description. The right results will be uploaded for Mbarara and Lira i.r.o Land and family and students shouldn’t be shocked when their results change (even in a fundamental way).

Students of 2019 and below who are repeating subjects continue to be held to the rules before 2020. These didn’t bar students from review regardless of the mark obtained. As for 2020 and above, only those with 22.5 in the final can apply for review and verification.

Students miss IA [Individual Assessments] results for several reasons including having not sat the exam, having not signed attendance lists, failure to indicate registration numbers, indication of wrong registration numbers, failure to indicate booklet numbers and indication of wrong booklet numbers, among others. Now, students that were invited were required to check for their details on the attendance lists and therefore allow the centre to fetch their papers. Those whose papers have been recovered have their results uploaded in the system and will soon see them on their end.

The rules that bar students with more than one retake from verifying are the rules that they signed and are applied strictly. Until the rules are reviewed or amended, that remains the position.