‘AG JUSTIFICATION OF ZIALE POOR RECORD NOT ADDING UP’
By GIDEON NYENDWA
IT is disappointing and not adding up for the Attorney General, Mr MuliloKabesha to justify the continued poor results at the Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (ZIALE) by questioning the intelligence of students who are selected on merit, the University of Zambia Students Union (UNZASU) has said.
UNZASU president Gabriel Banda said it was unfortunate that instead of probing the institution for scoring 99 percent failure, Mr Kabesha was defending it by saying students could have failed English at Grade 12 but found themselves in law school hence the high failure rate at ZIALE.
Mr Banda said that it did not paint a good picture to accuse all universities of admitting unqualified students.
Mr Banda was reacting to the statement by Mr Kabesha suggesting that some higher learning institutions accept students who cannot read to study law, which was why ZIALE results were compromised.
He said that at every university whether public or private, there is a body which was in charge of academics in terms of regulation which was called senate.
He said the senate at UNZA provides policy on who gets admitted to the university.
Mr. Banda said that purporting that the schools were admitting unqualified students was nothing but an opinion unless there was provision of evidence of the allegations.
“Anyway, much as we do not agree with him, the Attorney General was entitled to his own opinion,” he said.
He said for one to be admitted in the School of Humanities at UNZA, one should always have at least a merit in English and some social sciences and that was the criteria they used.
Mr. Banda also said that at UNZA one must obtain a minimum of a B or B+ grade in languages and literature for them to be admitted to the School of Law.
He said there is always a qualified body that comes up with a criteria for admitting students in a particular school and one must meet that criteria for them to qualify into the School of Law.
Mr. Banda said that the School of Law at UNZA was different from other schools that offer law because they aim for quality rather than pushing people to proceed if they were able to pay.
He said that was the reason why people always say the UNZA School of Law was hard because the school is serious about producing quality.
Mr. Banda said the reason why if one went into the history of ZIALE they could always find that one or two students from UNZA had cleared at first attempt because it always aims at producing quality graduates.
