High tribunal voids law admission test
THE Supreme Court has voided a memo by the Legal Education Board (LEB) requiring students to pass an admission test before they can enter law schools.
In a 107-page decision dated Sept. 10 but released only on Tuesday, the high court said the admission test goes beyond supervision and regulation and violates academic freedom.
The court said the test is not only unreasonable but also illegal because it is used to exclude, qualify and restrict admissions to law schools.
“In striking down these objectionable clauses in the Philippine Law School Admission Test, the state’s inherent power to protect public interest by improving legal education is neither emasculate not compromised,” the tribunal said. “Rather, the institutional academic freedom of law schools to determine for itself who admit pursuant to their respective admissions policies is merely protected.”
The court also nullified the practice of the Legal Education Board to impose qualifications on faculty members and deans of graduate schools of law in violation of “institutional academic freedom on who may teach.”
The court said it treats the law admission test differently from the National Medical Admission Test (NMAT) because they operate differently, noting that the latter is evaluated by medical schools in relation to their own cut-off scores.
It also said the medical admission test score is not the only factor in the admission of a student to medical school. Rather, it is only “one of the bases for evaluating applicants for admission to a college of medicine.”
“Medical schools further enjoy the discretion to determine how much weight should be assigned to an NMAT score relative to the schools’ own admissions policy,” it said.
The validity of the law school admission test was first questioned on April 7, 2017, days before the first examinations. Another petition was filed in November 2018. — Vann Marlo M. Villegas
