Zero out of 8000. That’s the hard, sad truth. To amplify it – 8000 candidates answered the test for recruitment as accountants in the Accounts Department for the 80 post available, all failed. In a State where youth queue up for government jobs, we now learn that not a single candidate for the accountants’ post could get the minimum marks required to pass the initial exam. There is something definitely wrong here, either with the manner in which the test paper was set and corrected, or with the education system in the State. Either way, it has to be corrected and has to be done so urgently.
There exists a dearth of jobs in the State. While 8000 youth answered this exam in January, in the same month over 3000 queued up outside the North Goa Collectorate for temporary jobs of the clerical nature, forcing the authorities to call off the spot interviews and set a new date. We now have the accounts post not being filled and so possibly another re-exam, but will the government first answer how it came to be that not a single candidate could pass the test? It does lead to a question of whether the questions were wrongly set. One candidate has said that the questions themselves were difficult to understand, while the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education that set the paper says it was neither difficult nor tough.
We need a definitive answer here, but this result is undoubtedly a reflection on the appalling quality of education in the State, which raises a series of questions, the main one being what are the graduates that our colleges are churning out year after year capable of. This is a wakeup call for Goa University and its Academic Council needs to sit up and take note that 8000 of its graduates were not found eligible for the post of accountants in the State government. Can Goa University explain how everyone of its students who were granted degrees could fail an entrance test for accountants’ posts? We have to know whether it is the youth who have failed or is it the education system that prepares them for it.
It gets more interesting when it is revealed that Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education set the question paper for the exam. Goa Board has its mandate up to the Class XII level and this was an exam testing the proficiency of candidates at the graduate level. Yet, nobody managed to pass the exam. This reflects even more poorly on Goa University but will Goa University answer this? A few months ago when the National Institute of Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranked Goa University at 68, the rank dropping by four places from the previous year, the university had argued that the number of institutes that were ranked had increased and therefore the ranking had not changed, but remained the same. Are we in for a similar answer this time from the University or will the University admit that there are glitches in the system?
Another question that emerges is whether the best of the graduates opt for employment in the private sector and only the average and mediocre look for government jobs? Perhaps that question can be partially answered by taking up the challenge that the Aam Aadmi Party has put to the Accounts Director and the staff of the department. The challenge it to answer the same test and see how they fare. Is the staff of the directorate up to it?
