Declining CSS Result: who is responsible?

The disappointing results of this year’s competitive exam for civil service left the candidates shell-shocked as the passing ratio remained just 2.09%. Federal Public Service Commission, which conducts the exam for Central Superior Services (CSS) is blaming the education
system of the country for declining trend of CSS result. But in fact, the issue is not as simple as it is looking. FPSC is missing some facts while diagnosing the problem and is itself responsible for such a low result to a large extent. Candidates have serious reservations
on assessment system of FPSC. They are blaming FPSC for ruthless marking in specific subjects in order to curtail the number of passed candidates. The written result of this year’s exam depicts that the majority of candidates failed in English (Precise and Composition)
paper. While we look at the result of previous year, majority of candidates scored more than 70% marks in the said subject. The question which arises is that how, in a single year, the competency level of candidates in this subject had fallen to such a low level. The other argument by the candidates is that they managed to pass the English Essay paper
with good marks while failing the English (Precise and Composition) paper this year. So, if they were weak in English language then how have they passed the English Essay paper which requires more writing skills as compared to English (Precise and Composition). The differences in the marks of these subjects show that there is something wrong with
the paper marking criteria of FPSC. The other targeted subject was Town Planning and Urban Management in which most of the candidates failed this year. Many of candidates who failed in these subjects got more than 700 marks in aggregate, which is a landmark. So, their
competency may not be questioned as, if they were incompetent, they could not scored such a good marks in other papers.

FPSC must revamp its assessment and paper marking system to provide the candidates an unprejudiced platform to compete in the competitive exam. The policy of targeting a specific subject in marking must be revisited and Commission should make arrangements to diagnose the problems in marking system. There should be no compromise on competency of paper checkers and if a paper checker adopts biasness and not passes the huge chunk of candidates then such papers should be re-checked by other competent paper checkers in order to find the
discrepancies. Such biased approach of paper checkers shall not be allowed to ruin the future of the youth.

Taimoor Umar Gondal
Mandi Bahauddin