CSS - between merit and luck

Aversive stimuli such as electric shocks and nasty tastes have long been employed by therapists to make drug-abusers, sex offenders and pedophiles unlearn their undesirable behaviour. They purposefully associate pain with unacceptable fantasies to get their patients say, "They hate their desires because they make them sick." This is, however, one of the highly condemned methods of treating patients as it may lead to high rate of dropout, aggression, poor compliance with treatment and death risk for persons with heart and lung problems.

As a consequence of criticism on medical and ethical grounds, psychologists are now increasingly using safe stimuli instead of nasty ones to change their patients' behaviour. However, from the information I managed to glean from the CSS Club (a social media platform of the CSS aspirants), discussions with CSS aspirants and mark sheets of the CSS qualifiers of the past few years, FPSC's examiners are still using questionable stimuli and highly controversial methods of discouraging students from opting for certain optional subjects in CSS exam.

By way of explanation, one needs to look no further than the detailed mark sheets of candidates in the last couple of years. Students who, unfortunately, opt certain optional subjects often receive shockingly low marks, whereas others who happen to choose high scoring subjects in a given year secure unbelievably high marks, irrespective of the quality of their papers. As believed by the CSS aspirants and as detailed mark sheets of candidates show, FPSC's examiners wittingly target certain optional subjects chosen by a large number of students to ease their own burden. CSS aspirants are thereby in very low spirits due to the belief that no matter how hard they work, they would not get through the exam if their subjects happen to be the lowest scoring.

FPSC, therefore, needs to come clean about the criterion of paper checking and rumours of instructed marking in CSS exam. It would do well if it answers some hard-hitting questions posed by the candidates. For instance, can a student having two or three lowest scoring optional subjects compete with a student having the highest scoring optional subjects? Is the latter not at an advantage of 70 to 90 marks over the former in the written part of the exam? Can he make up for the loss of 70 to 90 marks in written part even if he manages to get 20 to 30 marks higher in viva voce than a student having examiner-favoured optional subjects in that year? And even if the students with the lowest scoring non-compulsory subjects do not get high marks in interview, are they still not at a serious disadvantage vis-a-vis those having coincidentally high scoring subjects? Are both categories of students being treated equally? Has FPSC put the fate of candidates to the whims and moods of the examiners who mark their papers? Is FPSC's weak evaluation framework not a major cause of maladministration by the civil servants recruited merely on the basis of their lucky optional subjects?

Admittedly, some candidates with the lowest scoring optional subjects also make it by faring exceptionally well in interview. But, this does not exonerate FPSC's examiners because the fate of the unsuccessful candidates is not to be compared with that of a few exceptional candidates but with that of the candidates who get allocated due merely to their lucky optional subjects despite doing badly in interview. In fact, these few exceptional candidates are also left complaining, who believe that had they been treated equally in written part of the exam they would have secured much better groups.

As CSS toppers in 2010 and 2016 reportedly failed in 2011 and 2017 respectively and a candidate who won Rhodes Scholarship in 2013 failed in CSS essay in the same year by securing single-digit marks, one should consider FPSC's paper checking criterion before squarely blaming Pakistan's education system, though it is also far from satisfactory, for the dismal performance of candidates in CSS exam. Given FPSC's questionable assessment criterion and quota system which also discourages merit, introduction of any other CSS reforms would arguably not yield desired results. Isn't it time for FPSC to take some responsibility for the poor CSS result.