Recruitment: Can all 8000 applicants fail an eligibility test?

Alito Siqueira 

The government has announced the recruitment for 1500 vacancies in the next few months. This populist pre-election gesture of recruitment unfortunately also harbours a disturbing though naïve design. We will look at the record of government recruitments more recently and the information provided to members of the Assembly to understand the darker side of government recruitment.

Some 8000 candidates applied and answered the initial recruitment examination for 80 posts of accountants. Every one of the 8000 failed the test. Those attending the examination also included some of the brightest students who had performed exceedingly well at the 12th standard, and at the graduation and post-graduation levels. One of them at least had passed the State Eligibility Test for lecturers.  The popular impression is that there is some kind of scam in this examination result. And indeed that does seem to be the case. The manner in which the examination was laid out and assessed suggests that the result was fixed. A cruel way of discrediting 8000 candidates and the educational system to which they belong with rather sinister intentions perhaps. We will first look at how the 8000 students came to be failed and why that process is suspect. In the second part we will discuss what could be parallel motives.

The chairperson, Goa Public Service Commission, has offered an explanation for this abysmal record. The youth from Goa had ability, he said, but they lack analytical reasoning, knowledge of scientific application and general knowledge. He further said that candidates have been prepared through their education to answer by way of rote learning (popularly referred to as ‘by-hearting’), with memorisation being the main element of study. We also learn that it was the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education that set the exam papers. It is this very Board that encourages the rote learning that the chairman complains about. 

This failure of 8000 candidates at the recruitment examination poses several questions that the Board and its experts need to answer. If the students passing out from Goan schools and colleges are not equipped with the knowledge and skill sets, the paper setters were certainly aware of it. However, the notification issued by the Directorate of Accounts does not mention a word about the nature of skill sets required. In fact the manner in which the syllabus is laid is similar to the way it is done in conventional content-driven programmes and tests. This comes across as cruel, where examiners set a question paper with the sole intention of proving that the candidates do not have skills.

Secondly, the GPSC chairman also suggests that the examinees fail when they need to choose one of four options (popularly known as MCQs, or Multiple Choice Questions). However, a look at the notification announcing the accountants’ examination shows that Paper I (English) was 90% subjective and Paper II (Accounts, etc) was 50% subjective, therefore a total of about 70% of the examination paper for the initial recruitment test was subjective. Why does the entrance exam for the post of accountants require such a large per cent of subjective assessment, particularly when moderating and having common standard for correction across 8000 students is a hugely complex task? How many teachers assessed these answer books? How long did they take? What were the instructions, criteria and rubrics provided to these assessors? Clearly, subjective assessment can and must be moderated across such large numbers – if possible through relative assessment. The Board of Higher Secondary Examination does have experience with large numbers and should be comfortable to discuss their methodology. Hence it is necessary to probe where exactly the students or moderators may have erred.

Did the Directorate of Accounts consider moderating the assessment so that a reasonable number of eligible candidates could have emerged in the result? To be sure, the Directorate of Accounts has a lot to answer for regarding this examination.

In the absence of answers to these questions the predominant impression is that the large weightage for subjective assessment is meant to leave room open for manipulation. 

It is clear that all is not well with the way the Directorate of Accounts conducted the recruitment. Its motives for declaring all candidates as failures are suspicious. The entrance exam (or rather its result) was an instrument in order to block any recruitment of accountants.

Saying that we will advertise the posts again, as the Directorate of Accounts says, is of no use whatsoever. If they believe that students could have picked up the skill needed in a short time then they should have gone ahead with recruitment after moderating the results, as one commentator has suggested. When tests are conducted for such large numbers, not moderating the result shows that the examiners lacked competence in scientific testing techniques or else acted with bad faith. It is a failure of the examining authority not the candidates. On the other hand, if they hold that the skills will take time to acquire, they need to wait for a sufficient time till a new batch of suitably trained candidates emerge. 

The Directorate must explain how a repeat test could make a difference to what will largely be the same candidates. Or it should change the examination to better suit the existing skills of the candidate. What is the proposed strategy of the Directorate? To begin with, the Directorate of Accounts must make public the question paper for the last examination along with the frequency distribution of marks scored against each question. It should also make public the instructions and rubrics provided to the assessors. 

This is necessary for at least two important reasons: Frist the candidates and future candidates will be able to understand what is being assessed, and how, and secondly it will restore some lost credibility to this eligibility process.

The GPSC chairman has further said that in the case of recruitments for some other posts at the GPSC a very small percentage of students passed the examination. 

This raises the question: what has the GPSC done about this? Have educational institutions like colleges and the university been informed to help them make students meet job requirements? What are the skill sets it looks for among the candidates? This is particularly important, especially as the notification of examination of accountants does not indicate the pattern of assessment and the skills that are required. The error here is of not informing candidates on what and how they will be assessed and then using the results to discredit them.

More importantly what is the government doing to close the divergence between the educational system on the one hand and the skills needed for jobs and recruitments. Must not the Chief Minister, who holds the portfolio of the education minister, explain how the education system in Goa is unable to produce even one candidate that is minimally able to occupy the post of an accountant? Does the Goa University have anything to say about this absence of skills needed at a job and the system of education in the graduate and post graduate classrooms? 

The examination has left a bad taste in the mouth of the candidates, particularly the more serious among them. The educational institutions and educationists at large know well that any exam designed for such large numbers, if and when it results in the failure of all students is a reflection on the exam and the motives of those who conducted it, rather than the candidates, who are the victims of the system.

Therefore, the explanations offered for the failure of 8000 candidates are not convincing. The Department has sought to explain away its incompetence by blaming candidates who sat for the exam.

In the next part we shall look at why and how students and the educational system have been used by the Directorate of Accounts to cover up issues in recruitment in which the Directorate is suspect.

(With inputs from members of Social Justice Action Committee and GAKUVED)