Two regulators have proposed a single accreditation gateway for Ghana’s law programmes, ending overlapping oversight as the country implements its new Legal Education Act.
The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) and the Council for Legal Education and Training (CLET) agreed at a meeting in Accra on a model that would route all Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and professional law training programmes through one application pathway, a joint inspection and a unified evaluation matrix.
Under the proposal, GTEC would lead on institutional quality such as governance, staffing and facilities, while CLET would oversee curriculum, training standards, assessment and professional readiness. Neither body could grant full accreditation without the other’s approval.
The framework is described as the most concrete step yet in implementing the Legal Education Act, 2026, which Parliament passed in March to overhaul how lawyers are trained and admitted to the Bar.
The Act established CLET as an independent statutory regulator of legal education, separating that role from the General Legal Council (GLC), which still sets rules for the profession and calls lawyers to the Bar. Reformers had argued that the previous arrangement, under which the GLC both ran and regulated the Ghana School of Law, created a conflict of interest.
For decades, the route from an LLB to the Bar ran almost exclusively through the Ghana School of Law at Makola, a bottleneck that triggered repeated legal and political battles over access. The new law allows other accredited institutions to offer professional law training under strict oversight.
The proposed system would create a joint steering committee and a permanent joint secretariat, set a multi stage accreditation cycle running from early engagement through to the public listing of approved programmes, and introduce annual compliance reporting and graduated sanctions ranging from advisory notices to suspension of intakes and revocation of accreditation.
Supporters say the model cuts duplication, improves transparency and aligns Ghana with international practice, pointing to England and Wales, where the solicitors’ regulator and the higher education quality body run a joint protocol for law degrees and vocational courses. Some stakeholders caution that the transition will be complex, requiring new institutional capacity and harmonised data systems.
