Civil service examination
Civil service examinations (also public tendering) are examinations implemented in various countries for recruitment and admission to the civil service. They are intended as a method to achieve an effective, rational public administration on a merit system.
The most ancient example of such exams were the imperial examinations of ancient China. Russia implemented such procedures in the turn of the 19th century.
In the UK
In the United Kingdom, the permanent and politically neutral Her Majesty's Civil Service, in which appointments were made on merit, was introduced on the recommendations of the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan Report, which also recommended a clear division between staff responsible for routine ("mechanical") work, and those engaged in policy formulation and implementation in an "administrative" class. The report was well-timed, since bureaucratic chaos in the Crimean War (1854–56) promptly caused a clamour for the change. A Civil Service Commission was accordingly set up in 1855 to oversee open recruitment and end patronage, and most of the other Northcote-Trevelyan recommendations implemented over some years. This system was broadly endorsed by Commissions chaired by Playfair (1874), Ridley (1886), MacDonnell (1914), Tomlin (1931) and Priestley (1955).
In Imperial China
In India
In Brazil
In the Brazilian Civil Service, public examinations (Portuguese: concursos públicos) are the most commonly used form of hiring public servants, including school teachers, university professors, bureaucrats, diplomats, prosecutors, judges, etc. The Constitution of Brazil of 1988 demands that public servants be hired by public examinations.
The large majority of examinations are composed of multiple choice tests, but other types in conjunction with those are common, such as writing tests and oral tests.
All trial court judges, both in the state and federal level, are hired by public examination. Judges of the Justice Courts and of the Regional Federal Courts, which are state and federal appellate courts, are chosen among trial court judges, with a reservation of 10% of the seats for lawyers and 10% for prosecutors.
All trial court prosecutors are also chosen by public contest, and prosecutors that work in cases of the appellate courts are chosen among trial court prosecutors.
Only 6.3% of school principals in Brazilian public schools are hired by public contest, 43% of them are elected, and 45% of them are nominated by politicians.
In Pakistan
In Pakistan a Competitive examination is conducted by FPSC for Central Superior Services of Pakistan and other Civil service, it was inherited from Indian Civil Service (British India).