HEC panel to probe poor CSS results

Chairperson says results need to be treated as a national crisis

ISLAMABAD: The newly appointed higher education chairperson Tariq Banuri has said that recent results of Central Superior Services (CSS) exams need to be treated as a national crisis and announced that a high level committee will be set up to probe the poor showing.

The results were released on June 28 in which only 261 candidates (3.3 per cent) were declared successful in the CSS examinations of 2017 in which 155 male and 106 female were recommended for the grade-17. The Federal Public Service Commission in recent times has come under serious criticism from parliamentarians and general public for perpetually ‘poor’ percentage of successful candidates.

“We are working actively to address this issue,” Banuri told The Express Tribune. He shared a detailed status on Facebook and told this scribe that a press release about the issue would be released in the next few days.

According to FPSC, in total 9,391 candidates appeared in the written examination of which only 312 managed to pass and after viva voce about 310 candidates, including 199 males and 111 females qualified for the interview.  This result of 2017 is slightly better than last year, when 199 candidates (2.0 per cent) were declared successful in final interview out of a total of 9,643 candidates who had applied in the first round. It was lowest success rate of CSS aspirants since 2011.

Banuri in his Facebook status expressed serious concern over the results while sharing the news. “I consider the CSS results announced yesterday to be a shocking indictment of my sphere of responsibility.” He further added that this decline needed to be treated as a national crisis.

“I will set up a high level committee to pinpoint the specific weaknesses (which universities, which subjects, what skills, etc.),” he wrote in his status adding, so the HEC could help universities remedy some of the deficiencies immediately.

Meanwhile, for the first time, women have the highest number of successful candidates in the CSS results in which 106 females out of total 261 candidates made it to the civil service as they have made 40.6 per cent of the total number candidates.

It was in October 2016 when the top recruiting body for civil service announced that it would consult all the stakeholders including HEC to probe the reasons for poor level of scholarship by candidates. The FPSC did little to come up with concrete changes and suggested one paper a day including other minor changes.
It was after the poor results in 2017 that the then Senate chairperson Raza Rabbani formed a senate committee on Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) Report of 2015.

The committee started looking into the mandate, structure, syllabus and mode of examination to see if it met the contemporary needs of governance and in delivery of services and other relevant matters.

It invited human resources specialists and corporate experts to improve the structure of the FPSC commission and its working mechanism which it had described in its first meetings as ‘outdated’.  Before the committee could finalise anything in writing, the term of the committee expired on April 11 and all the hard work was lost.