I LISTENED to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Episode 11: Karen Cheah on raising the bar.
When the discussion proceeded to the low Certificate in Legal Practice (CLP) passing rate, it was of particular interest to listen to the conversation after having read the earlier report Inability to be critical contributes to low CLP passing rate: Bar president.
Malaysian Bar president Karen Cheah attributed local law students’ inability to be critical when analysing CLP exam questions as a factor in the low passing rate for the programme last year.
In all honesty, Cheah wasn’t saying something that was not known for a good five years now, publicly.
A summary of the comments and observations by the CLP examiners in 2017 is available on the official website of the Legal Profession Qualifying Board (LPQB). The LPQB has agreed to share the comments and observations with the view of assisting candidates to better understand where they had gone wrong in the CLP examination.
The summary sets out clearly that the CLP examination, being a professional examination and the entry point into the legal profession, requires the candidates to be tested and undergo a more stringent process to ensure that the successful candidates it produces are of a high-standard worthy of the profession.
The common comments shared by the examiners highlight the weaknesses of candidates, which are:
– candidates are not befitting a law graduate who has attained a qualifying degree;
– clueless answers given;
– answers afforded are of a similar pattern, which leads to a conclusion that they merely regurgitate or parrot what they have been told by their lecturers even if it is wrong in substance;
– total reliance on model answers for past-year questions, which are topic-driven.
Candidates tended to regurgitate their knowledge of a particular area of law rather than apply that knowledge to the particular facts of the case provided in the question.
It appeared that the candidates seemed to have memorised a standard set of answers for a particular area of law. The way many candidates answered their questions were also seen to be uniform, which indicated the way they were taught and instructed.
The CLP may be known, as Karen said, as “the most difficult examination in the world” but no examination in the world sets out to fail students. The CLP examination is a professional examination.
The following explains the quality assurance of the examination.
“The director (of the CLP) is responsible for conducting the CLP examination. He identifies the examiners and markers and takes it to the board for approval. The examiners will set the paper and the director will vet them to see if they are in order. Then the exams are held. The scripts are handed over to markers. Before that, there will be a markers’ meeting to explain to them how the scripts would be marked. There will also be a marking scheme showing the answer and also the marks allocated. After the scripts are marked and returned, there is a remarking process.
“The remarking is only for scripts within a certain range, i.e., those who have failed by a certain range. Originally all failed scripts (are remarked). Then it was found that it was not (useful) to remark all as the marks were too low. After the remarking, the scripts are checked again by clerks to see if there are errors in addition and also to see that all pages have been marked.”
There is nothing secretive about the above. One can read them in the case of Khalid bin Yusoff lwn Pendakwa Raya [2010] 3 MLJ 272. It is consistent with professional examinations anywhere in the world, where examination questions are written by experienced legal practitioners and academics, called the paper setters. The paper setters meet to scrutinise and approve each question. Exam papers also undergo scrutiny to ensure all questions comply with the current curriculum (See for example the UK Bar Qualification Manual available here).
By the way, it wasn’t “the head of the CLP Board” but the director of the CLP who was charged for two offences committed in 2001. And it wasn’t for corruption but for forgery for the purpose of cheating and for cheating under Sections 468 and 417 of the Penal Code respectively.
That said, the The Good, The Bad and The Ugly has certainly raised the bar on civil discussions and conversations. – The Vibes, August 7, 2022
Hafiz Hassan is a reader of The Vibes
