All 8000 candidates failing the exam for the 80 government post is nothing but a wake-up call for the government. If all these candidates are inefficient, then there is something seriously wrong with our education. All these 8000 students are equipped with degrees and the necessary educational qualification, but have failed to make the cut. Now then, what happens to the thousands of our students who pass out every year with flying colours scoring in the range of 90 per cent and more, or for that matter those who get degrees in related streams?
Goans are known to be fluent in conversation skills besides their hospitable attitude. But these qualities are not enough to pass muster for competitive exams. The mass failure of candidates is a clear sign of a mismatch between our academics and job requirements. This calls for a serious introspect on the curriculum that is being taught to students. That a commerce student, well-versed with book-keeping and accounts with additional subjects of business and commerce is unable to clear a set of objective and subjective questions, is a cause for concern. We must stop giving this result a political slant and focus on course correction immediately.
This result is also a lesson to learn for the government. A careful study is required of the result to understand where candidates have faltered. Remedial measures must be put in place so that Goa grooms students with the right aptitude for competitive exams like these. If not, government will still be struggling to get the right candidates, even after another round and may be eventually there would be no other option but to lower the difficulty level.
The positive, however, is that candidates found the exam tough, which could also mean that the government is serious enough in selecting the right candidates for the posts. Majority of government employees are otherwise known to be holding on to limited knowledge restricted to only their job profile, where adaptability to change is an issue.
A major reform is required in the education sector. While ushering in high-profile educational brands like IIT, NIT and speciality engineering colleges, Goa cannot afford to ignore the grass-roots. Our curriculum is not just good enough to give our students that competitive edge, let’s not boast about those few jewels that have shown sparks of brilliance.
The old image of being a predominately tourism-driven state continues to hold sway and we still struggle with perennial problems. We understand that education is close to Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s heart. While planning to move the next generation to the IT highway, the chief minister has spent crores of rupees in distributing laptops and tabs to students, most of which have sadly been misused and abused. We agree that there are several good-intentioned plans in the pipeline and the picture ahead may appear bright. However, we need to seriously revisit our school curriculum. Introduction of value education, Goa’s history and teaching traffic rules are excellent initiatives, but this will not help our students compete and they will still be restricted to the theory of scribbling pages after pages to prove that x equals zero.
