PESHAWAR, Oct 12: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Public Service Commission has proposed appointments to government departments in the province on the basis of performance in interviews and not academic record of candidates until uniform education system is introduced in the province.

The proposal is made in a report tabled in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly last Saturday.

As proposed in the KPPSC report, which is available with Dawn, a uniform curriculum should be introduced in government and private educational institutions across the province so that a level playing field is made available to candidates coming from different backgrounds to compete with each other in the competitive examinations.

`This will offset the advantage gained by a candidate because of any iniquitous system of examination.

According to KPPSC, the privateschools and universities have different syllabi and curriculum costing the learners differently resulting in creation of classes in the society and resultant discrimination in employments.

In the report, KPPSC criticised the regulatory bodies over failure to control the mushrooming of private educational institutions in the province and observed that most of them adopted commercial approach while investing in education and ignored quality education.

`They (private educational institutions) encourage cheating in examinations and offer heavy bribes to invigilating staff for it.

According to KPPSC, the high marks obtained through unfair means give students of private educational institutions advantage over students enrolled in government schools, where cheating is relatively low and grades are rigidly given, so the candidates with degrees from private institutions have an edge in marks reserved for academics, which sometimes enhance their prospects for se-lection even if they perform poor in interview.

`A practicable recipe to overcome this malpractice is to do away with counting academic marks and deciding selection on basis of performance in interview.

In the report, KPPSC says a wide variety of courses are taught in universities, colleges and schools, and syllabus for same classes different from institution to institution.

This, it says, creates problems of equating degrees or finding their equivalence, which has made task of KPPSC harder while weighing the academic qualification, especially when there is either belated or vague or no rendering of advice at all form the reaccept forums despite repeated requests.

Also, KPPSC is of the view that improper or non-regulation of private institutions has brought about a serious problem of fake certificates of service experience being issued to some candidates for posts, which prescribes such experience as necessary qualifi-cation.

Similarly, it adds, lack of crosschecking of existence of staff in private schoolsetcathigherlevelresults in issuance of fake experience certificates unchallenged.

In the report, KPPSC says a candidate possessing a Bachelor of Education degree had attended only 20 days and paid full fee to obtain the degree.

According to it, the award of degrees and certificates to students with small or no percentage has reportedly enabled them to enrol in other degree courses at the same time and therefore, in one academic session, a student got two degrees at the expense of quality.`Such students perform poorly in tests or interviews conducted by the commission.

To address the issues in question, PSC proposed the strengthening of the Higher Education Regulatory Authority saying the authority`s resent skeleton staff is unable to regulate the ever growing number of private institutions.