AAU Holds National LL.B. Curriculum Validation Workshop
Addis Ababa University (AAU) College of Law and Governance Studies in collaboration with various stakeholders held a one day national LL.B. curriculum validation workshop at Inter Luxury Hotel on the 12th of August 2021.
The workshop focused on discussing the adoption of new LL.B. Curriculum as national standards to contribute the quality and relevance of the undergraduate legal study in Ethiopia based on Curriculum Review and CLE Assessment Reports, the result of collaborative efforts of more than 32 professionals drawn from 27 different institutions.
As stated by Assis. Prof. Biruk Haile, one of the reviewers from AAU School of Law, the curriculum review is very essential as the law education of the country has been hampering due to lack of regular review, lose of responsive ownership, politically motivated pressure and the like.
“We have seen the curriculum has shortcomings in that law graduates in particular have lack of skills, such as writing, expressing themselves, inability to work in multicultural context (inability to handle issues from a variety of social backgrounds), failure to produce talented learners based on indigenous knowledge and national values,” Biruk said.
According to Biruk, the University has developed a curriculum that can address the shortcomings so far observed, and does not require all the law schools in the country to operate uniformly; it grants freedom.
“We have set the basics that a person who claims to have graduated from the Ethiopian Law School should know on a minimal standard and leave the rest to the schools,” Biruk intensified.
The main focus of the change in the current curriculum, as mentioned by Biruk, is on the profile of graduate students; what kind of graduates, what skills and abilities they have, reflecting the rule of law, humanity, democracy, national knowledge and cultural diversity.
Biruk detailed that the legal libraries should be organized in a way that they understand the needs of law schools and provide inputs for law education and research, and need to make sure that the people who work in them are well versed in legal matters.
“Due to lack of awareness and proper protection, legal education has been taken as a political tool. Assumed governments and political parties in the country have been exploiting it in a way that is conducive to their policy implementation. We are now fighting to prevent this damage and for the owner to work freely,” Biruk finally said.
According to the overall discussion in the workshop, curriculum design related findings from the previous one are: deficit in clarity, question of course relevance to national contexts, lack of properly articulated graduate profile, failure to sufficiently take into account diversity and complexity of legislation, duplicity between courses in the LL.B. and LL.M. Curriculums, to mention some.
The current LL.B. curriculum frame focuses on envisaging greater freedom for law schools to experiment, innovate, and in general to progress in relation to curriculum design and redesign; gives liberty to change credit hours of electives, rearrange sequence of elective and mandatory courses, even they may introduce new elective courses taking their own aspirations into consideration and regional contexts in which they are located.
Source: Addis Ababa University