Delayed grades jeopardise UG’s Law students

Dear Editor,

I write again on the matter of the University of Guyana’s continued failure to release outstanding Criminal Law I and Criminal Law II grades – courses completed during the 2024/2025 academic year – and a matter I first raised in a letter to the editor published on October 1, 2025, in the Stabroek News, which has since ceased operations.

The class of some 100 students (it is likely much more, as there are students who had to resit exams) sat our first examination for this course on December 2, 2024. On October 1, 2025 – 10 months later – a letter was published in the Stabroek News highlighting the unacceptable delay in the release of our Criminal Law I and II grades. The very next day, the university responded publicly, acknowledging the delay as “regrettable” and assuring the student body that the outstanding grades would be released “within the next week”. That was over 11 months ago. Today, nearly 22 months after we sat that first exam, students still have no clear information on the status of those grades; no revised timeline, and no explanation beyond a promise that was never kept.

This is no longer a minor administrative hiccup. It is a matter of real consequence for real students. Final-year LLB candidates are, in the coming months, expected to submit applications to regional law schools such as the Hugh Wooding Law School^[1]. Incomplete or unverifiable transcripts at this stage put our applications, and by extension their entire professional trajectories, at risk. And the problem is not confined to my graduating class; second-year students, too, remain in limbo over these same grades, with no indication of when – or whether – that will change. I suspect this issue affects a similar number of year-two students, bringing the total affected students to well over 200.

Compounding the issue is the university’s own resit policy. Students who are found to have failed a course may resit, but are capped at a maximum grade of C regardless of their actual performance on the resit. For students who are managing this alongside a full course load and, in many cases, full- or part-time employment, that policy raises serious questions of fairness – particularly when the delay is entirely of the university’s own making. It is one thing to ask students to accept a capped grade after a fair and timely process; it is another to ask them to accept it after years of institutional silence.

There was a moment, at the start of this semester, when it seemed the university might finally engage with the problem. The new Head of the Department of Law, Professor Courtney Abel, met with students and was directly asked about the status of the missing grades. Professor Abel admitted he was not aware of the outstanding grades and promised to look into the matter and report back to the class. That was the last time the students heard of it. No update has followed.

I do not doubt that individual staff members within the department are acting in good faith. But good faith from individuals cannot substitute for institutional accountability. Students affected by this delay – across two cohorts now – deserve more than vague assurances. They deserve a specific date for the release of these grades, a clear explanation of what has caused a year-long delay on top of already-broken promises, and a commitment to communicate proactively rather than waiting to be asked, yet again, in the pages of a media entity.

The university has, in the past, pointed to the achievements of its law graduates as reassurance of its standards. Those achievements are not in question. What is in question is whether current students – many of whom are now preparing to apply to law school themselves – can trust the institution to meet its own basic administrative obligations. On the evidence of the past year, that trust has not been earned.

References

1. Two Year Programme Admissions for Entry for 2026 (Non-UWI Applicants) - The Hugh Wooding Law School | Trinidad and Tobago — hwls.edu.tt ↩