It was joy and fun when up to 1,059 students passed the pre-entry exam to study law at the prestigious School of Law, of Makerere University. This joy will be short-lived, however, when these students discover that getting 50% was not enough to guarantee them a slot in the course.
After initially admitting 37 students on government sponsorship, the school of law added a paltry 151 students in private sponsorship admissions. The 151 include 58 admitted to the day program to supplement those on government sponsorship and another 93 for the evening program.
These total 188 students are free of the mature entry admissions and admissions on sports merit that will be added later on.
Consequently, the lowest admission mark has been 63% of the mark, the highest in recent years.
Observers say that this year’s pre-entry exam was too simple and these outcomes are the consequences.
“In the past, only 400 would pass the exam and the rest would have ample time to decide their next steps. How are you going to convince a student that scored 60% that they were not good enough?” wondered a student that preferred anonymity.
The school of law at Makerere suffers shortages in space and staff with individual lecturers teaching three or more course units at a time and the first year class studying from the University Senate instead of the gazetted law school space in the university. As a result, they can only admit a limited number of students that can fit within their space and lecturer to student ratio.
