Statistics on the 2014 Bar Examinations
(Part 5)
by Thads Bentulan
thadsbentulan@gmail.com
The
Examiners
The Chair of the Bar
Committee, which is rotated each year, rightfully keeps the examiners anonymous
due the immense pressure from examinees and their fraternities to obtain any
form of advantage such as leakages. But when a lecturer suddenly goes on official
leave the year before, he is immediately suspected as the next year’s examiner.
A bar examiner may
be tempted to construct questions that are meant to impress the candidates with
his supposed expertise rather than test the latter’s knowledge of the law. Some
questions have questionable logic or questionable validity as a metric of the
candidate’s knowledge. However, since discretion is given to the examiner, it
is almost impossible to assail the appropriateness of such a bar question.
The examinee is
afraid that the bar examinations will not test him on what he knows; he is
afraid that the examiner will test him on what he does not know.
Based on information
from various sources, each examiner is supposed to give 50 questions personally
to the Chairman of the Bar Committee (who is a sitting Justice) at least 45
days before the exams. The questions are preferably in the handwriting of the
examiner. By the time he has prepared 20 questions, he will have run out of
questions to ask. And this probably tempts him to ask outlandish questions.
Of the 50, the
Chairman will select 20 questions or, the latter may reject all questions and
make his own.
Weakest
Link
Remember I said that
I will share my discovery of the weakest link in the entire bar exam
operational cycle that remains unrectified to this day, and may be have caused
tremendous injustice to the examinees?
The Supreme Court
spends millions to protect the integrity and streamline the bar examination
process, and over the years they have developed an impressive template. Yet,
ironically, in my opinion, they have not given attention to the weakest link of
the entire process: the correction of the examinees’ answers.
This is not the
place to fully discuss each factor that makes the correction phase as the
weakest link but I will just summarize some ideas.
