The Civil Service Commission may soon adopt the Supreme Court’s online and regionalized conduct of licensure examinations for aspiring lawyers for its civil service examinees, effectively doing away with its “conventional pen-and paper examinations”.
In a media briefer, the SC’s Public Information Office disclosed that CSC Chairperson Karlo A. B. Nograles personally observed the conduct of the Bar examinations at the testing center at the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City on Sunday, November 20, the last day of the four-day Bar tests.
Nograles had earlier sent a letter to Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo and requested permission for CSC delegations to observe the conduct of the online and regionalized Bar examinations.
The letter was endorsed by Gesmundo to SC Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, the chairperson of the examinations committee for the 2022 Bar exams.
“In line with our vision to transition from the conventional pen-and paper examinations, the Commission plans to introduce digitalized and localized examinations for the CSC-PPT [Civil Service Examinations – Pen and Paper Test] sustaining the momentum of the digital shift pioneered by the Supreme Court…,” Nograles said in his letter.
“As we transition to this digitalized platform, we would like to request the support of the Supreme Court in a collaborative endeavor for the adoption of policies and methodologies towards this digital shift,” Nograles added.
The CSC chairman also told Chief Justice Gesmundo that aside from observing the actual conduct of the Bar examinations, their visit was “to benchmark the procedures and operations for formal integration of [the Court’s] best practices in the localized and digitalized civil service examinations.”
He then congratulated and expressed the CSC’s full support for the efforts of the SC towards the digital transformation of the conduct of Bar examinations – considered the toughest licensure examination in the country.
The SC started administering the online and regionalized Bar examinations in the joint examinations for 2020 and 2021.
Due to the success of the first online examinations, the SC decided to conduct all forthcoming examinations online and regionalized.
The chairperson of the 2020-2021 Bar examinations committee was Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen.
Associate Justice Ramon Paul L. Hernando is the incoming chairperson of the 2023 Bar examinations committee.
