Eighty-two per cent of the students who sat the bar examinations at the Kenya School of Law last year failed.

A report by a task force chaired by lawyer Fred Ojiambo released in 2017 shows that from 2009 to 2016 only 7,530 out of 16,086 students passed the bar exams while 8,549 failed. That is a failure rate of 53 per cent.

The worrying trend has forced the Law Society of Kenya to start investigations into the mass failure.

The task force chaired by lawyer Esther Chege was set up in line with a judgment issued in 2017 by Justice John Mativo who ordered investigations into the large number of failures at KSL.

Those who fail are allowed to re-take the exams within five years.

The statistics indicate that of all the 1,628 students who re-sat the exams, only 186 passed.

That means a staggering 89 per cent of students sitting the exams for at least the second time failed.

The Kenya School of Law is the only bar school in Kenya as mandated by law to offer Advocates Training. Its exams are set and marked by the Council for Legal Education.

The current Council of Legal Education/Kenya School of Law was established as an independent statutory body in 1995 with the specific mandate to: organize and conduct courses for the development of legal professionals; conduct courses for Government personnel on the general understanding of the law and organizing Para-legal courses and programmes.

PC: Blair Shapera 

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