EVERY year thousands of aspirants sit the Central Superior Services (CSS) examination conducted by the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) to become part of the country’s civil services. However, hardly about two per cent of the applicants are able to pass the competitive examination (CE). Why do majority of the candidates fail to qualify the test?

There are two schools of thought on this issue. One says that those who fail to qualify the examination are not well prepared and their writing skills are not up to mark. If this is the case, why do those who have qualified the test once fail to pass it in their next attempt? Moreover, those who have passed the examination are often found saying that they qualified owing to nothing but a stroke of luck.

The other school of thought believes that the CE process is not transparent and objective. It leaves the candidates at the mercy of lady luck. They are of the opinion that since thousands of candidates appear in the test, it is difficult to give reasonable time and focus to every paper, and that leads to errors in the checking and marking process.

Such mistakes, howsoever small they may well be, can ruin the career of many eligible candidates and deprive the state of efficient future civil servants.

It is high time the FPSC reformed its examination process. In this regard the commission can learn a lot from India’s Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) which faced similar problems, and resolved the issue by increasing the number of attempts from three to four. It also introduced a preliminary test of 200 marks based on multiple-choice questions (MCQs), and 50pc marks are now required to pass the preliminary test which also entails negative marking.

After these reforms, the number of applicants for the main examination decreased drastically and the burden of paper checking decreased, and transparency and objectivity improved.

If we care about the future of our young generation, which should be the case, such and other possible reforms are imperative.

Dr Tasawar Ali
Faisalabad

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2022