KATHMANDU: In Jajarkot’s Chhedagad Municipality–5, at Bhagyodaya Secondary School in Badaban, three teachers have been appointed through a grant from the ward office. Their monthly salary has been fixed at four thousand rupees. These teachers were appointed not through the open competition of the Teacher Service Commission, but by the School Management Committee.

There is no clarity on when the fate of Bhagyodaya Secondary School’s four-thousand-rupee-salary teachers will be decided. Apart from these teachers who receive salaries from the ward office, Chhedagad Municipality has also created another category of teachers, called municipal teachers.

The municipal teachers recruited under the Education Act and the Municipal Education Regulations were likewise appointed without going through the Teacher Service Commission’s competitive examination. However, these teachers are now pushing local authorities to receive salaries and benefits equivalent to the government scale.

The municipality has set a monthly salary of 15,000 rupees for primary level, 17,000 rupees for lower secondary, and 35,000 rupees for secondary level. A total of 54 municipal teachers have been recruited there. Bir Bahadur Nepali, a municipal teacher at Bidyajyoti Basic School in Jeva, says, “Teachers selected through TSC examinations who teach alongside us earn twice as much, and this kind of discrimination is intolerable.”

This practice of teacher recruitment in Chhedagad reflects the arbitrary hiring of teachers in community schools across the country and the resulting problems. The Teacher Service Commission has been established to select teachers in community schools through competitive examinations. However, the government has bypassed the Commission and appointed a large number of various types of teachers based on influence and connections.

Recruiting one’s own people in government schools without competition is not a new trend. This practice has existed as a persistent problem from the beginning. That is why currently, in government schools, there are eleven types of teachers: permanent, temporary, contractual, relief, teaching-learning grant, technical stream, special education, volunteer teachers, child development facilitators, municipal teachers, and privately funded teachers. Most teachers, except permanent ones, have been recruited based on influence after fulfilling basic formalities.

According to data from the Centre for Education and Human Resource Development, there are 33,739 community schools in Nepal, with 177,182 government-paid teachers. Among them, 66,047 (37 percent) are temporary teachers recruited bypassing the Teacher Service Commission. There are 111,135 teachers working under permanent positions.

Among temporary teachers, the largest number are relief teachers. There are 43,042 relief teachers nationwide. Even relief teachers receiving government-scale salaries have mostly been appointed in schools without examinations, based on influence. The School Management Committees have been recruiting relief teachers by completing the ‘procedure’ in the relief quota provided by the Ministry of Education. The current main demand of relief teachers is that these positions be converted to permanent ones, allowing them to secure permanent status through internal examinations.

Apart from relief teachers, 2,000 higher secondary-level teachers have been appointed without examinations, while 10,966 teachers under the teaching-learning grant are also non-competitive. Additionally, 10,039 ‘volunteer teachers’ receiving government salaries have been recruited without competition. The total number of non-competitive teachers increases further when counting teachers recruited by local levels. Moreover, 31,418 child development facilitators have been directly recruited.

The Teacher Service Commission has been established to select teachers in community schools through competitive examinations. However, the government has bypassed the Commission and appointed a large number of various types of teachers based on influence and connections.

According to the Centre for Education and Human Resource Development, there are 24,035 privately funded teachers in community schools. Interestingly, among the teachers appointed bypassing the Teacher Service Commission, the majority are political party workers, education officials, office-bearers of School Management Committees, and relatives of principals.

In community schools, ‘school staff’ who receive salaries from the government fund have also been recruited without competition, based solely on influence. According to Gangaram Tiwari, chairman of the Nepal School Employees Council, the total number of staff is 31,963. Even though the government allocates a budget for school staff, there is no sanctioned position system, which prevents a proper process for their permanent appointment.

Helpless Teacher Service Commission

The government established the National Teacher Service Commission in 1999 to stop the arbitrary recruitment of teachers without reliable competition and to appoint teachers through open competition. However, the government itself made the Commission ineffective for a long time. From the beginning, the Commission was hindered from working independently.

Four years after its establishment, the Commission was compelled to publish the results of the written examination conducted in 1995 by the then District Education Office and Regional Education Directorate.

Udayaraj Soti, who served as the founding chairman and led the Commission for three terms from March 2003 to September 2015, admits that the Commission could not function due to government neglect and malintent. According to Soti, the government failed to provide vacant positions on time, pressured the Commission to suspend advertisements, and bypassed the Commission to appoint teachers directly from schools, which obstructed the Commission’s work. “The Commission tried to work according to an annual calendar, but the government did not allow its implementation under various pretexts,” Soti says.

The Commission issued its first advertisement in 2005. Its underlying intention was also to make permanent the temporary teachers who had been arbitrarily recruited based on influence. At that time, only temporary teachers working in 50 percent of the total vacant positions were allowed to compete in the advertisement. Temporary teachers who had been directly appointed by schools bypassing the Commission started pressuring to be made permanent automatically since 1991.

In 1991, the government automatically made most previously appointed temporary teachers permanent without any examination. The effects of that wrong precedent remain to this day. Since then, teachers who entered schools through any loophole have repeatedly pressured the government for various benefits, including automatic permanent status. This vicious cycle has affected both the structure of the Ministry of Education and the Teacher Service Commission. In the 26 years since the Commission was established, teacher recruitment advertisements have been issued only eight times, largely due to the vested interests of various types of temporarily appointed teachers.

Udayaraj Soti, who served as the founding chairman and led the Commission for three terms from March 2003 to September 2015, admits that the Commission could not function due to government neglect and malintent.

The Commission issued its second advertisement on 4 January 2013 for filling teacher positions at primary, lower secondary, and secondary levels. At that time, applications were collected through District Education Offices, and written exams were conducted in the respective districts. Although the Commission should have advertised every year, no advertisement was issued for seven years, which prevented new teachers from entering teaching and failed to stop arbitrary teacher recruitment. During this period, nearly 43,000 relief teachers were directly recruited in schools bypassing the Commission.

The government has repeatedly negotiated with teachers who were recruited without examinations based on influence. The Teacher Service Commission has become a medium for implementing the repeated agreements made by the government with these teachers. For example, when the third advertisement was issued on March 12, 2016, the Commission only conducted exams for positions vacant after April 23, 2006. Due to pressure from teachers, not only were temporary teachers appointed to previously vacant positions without competition, but on March 31, 2017, another advertisement was issued solely to make temporary teachers permanent.

Since 2018, the Commission has been trying to issue regular advertisements for teacher recruitment according to a schedule. However, due to lack of government support and facilitation, the schedule has not been fully implemented. The Commission issued the fourth advertisement in June 2018 for filling teaching positions at all three levels. It then took about three and a half years to issue the fifth advertisement. In December 2021, advertisements were issued for secondary, lower secondary, and primary levels. The sixth advertisement was issued in December 2023, and the seventh in April 2024.

The eighth advertisement, issued in December 2024 for secondary level and in April 2025 for lower secondary level, did not include primary-level positions due to agreements between teachers and the government. According to Ganesh Prasad Paudel, the Commission’s Information Officer, the Commission had prepared to publish advertisements for primary-level positions by the end of Baisakh according to the schedule, but the calendar was affected because the Centre for Education and Human Resource Development did not provide vacant positions.

First recruited, later made permanent

The main reason the Teacher Service Commission cannot regularly fill permanent positions is the protests by teachers recruited without competition. In the past, they had demanded, through amendments to the Education Act, that temporary teachers be easily made permanent via the Service Commission. This time as well, the School Education Bill is being passed according to agreements made with teachers. In the bill passed by the House Education, Health, and Information Technology Committee on August 21, 2025, it is provisioned that 60 percent of teacher recruitment will be through internal competition and 40 percent through open competition. This again increases the risk of blocking the path for bringing the most qualified personnel into the teaching profession through open competition, while providing an easy path for teachers appointed arbitrarily to become permanent.

The government has repeatedly negotiated with teachers who were recruited without examinations based on influence. The Teacher Service Commission has become a medium for implementing the repeated agreements made by the government with these teachers.

Due to pressure from teachers, the government amended the Education Act in 2005 and 2016 to provide temporary teachers with an opportunity to become permanent through limited competition. In the advertisement issued by the Commission in 2005, only temporary teachers were allowed to compete for 50 percent of the total positions. Similarly, through the eighth amendment of the Education Act in 2016, temporary teachers were given a final opportunity to become permanent.

Nevertheless, the teachers’ protests have not stopped. Under the leadership of the Nepal Teachers’ Federation, temporary teachers launched large-scale protests in October 2024 and April 2025, demanding that they be made permanent through internal examinations. Most recently, in the nine-point agreement reached between the Nepal Teachers’ Federation and the government on April 30, 2025, it was decided that accumulated sick leave for temporary teachers would be paid as a lump sum upon retirement.

Similarly, the agreement between teachers and the government stipulates that all temporary teachers will receive remote-area allowances as per existing laws. Currently, temporary and relief teachers with sanctioned positions receive this allowance, but teachers under the teaching-learning grant do not receive this benefit.

Due to repeated protests by teachers, the government addressed the demands of temporary teachers in the budget for fiscal year 2025/26 BS. The budget statement mentioned, “Temporary and relief teachers will be included in a contribution-based social security program. For this, a separate package with 10 percent contributions from both employer and contributor will be created and implemented.”

Former Commission Chairman Soti says that due to protests and pressure from teachers recruited through the Commission’s bypass and under various names, it has been difficult to fill permanent positions through the Service Commission in the past. “Since the Commission could not fill permanent positions, temporary teachers were recruited in the name of running schools,” he says. “When those same teachers demanded to be made permanent, it became a headache for the government.”

A teacher at Kalika Secondary School located in Subhakalika Rural Municipality, Kalikot/ Photo: Kalendra Sejuwal/Nepal News

Weak teachers, disappointing results

When teachers recruited based on influence are concentrated in government schools instead of those selected through the Teacher Service Commission’s open competition, it negatively affects the quality of education. Nepal News, during on-site studies of 30 community schools in Jajarkot, Jumla, Kalikot, and Dailekh districts of Karnali Province, found that the lack of qualified teachers was a major reason for the decline in educational quality.

At Bhairav Basic School in Bharta, Shubhakalika Rural Municipality–2, Kalikot, not a single teacher selected through the Commission’s open competition was found. The school has been operating with three temporary teachers appointed by the local level at a monthly salary of 15,000 rupees. Principal Mahendra Bahadur Shahi states that the average classroom learning achievement is below 50 percent.

At Kuladev Basic School in the same rural municipality, there are two permanent teachers. The average classroom learning achievement there is 51.26 percent. Principal Sadananda Bhattrai says that the school improvement plan for the current academic session has set a target of 60 percent. “We have to keep teachers at low salaries, they do not get training or other facilities, so how can we set a 100 percent target?” he asks.

At Laxmi Basic School in Deurali, Chamunda Bindrasaini Municipality, Dailekh, only one out of five teachers is a sanctioned position teacher. The school is operating with two relief teachers and one privately funded teacher. “The government does not send teachers; the school is running with temporary teachers,” says Principal Kalpana Acharya.

Baale Bishwakarma, program coordinator for Save the Children in Chhedagad, Karnali, says that the main challenge for quality education is the lack of qualified teachers. According to him, factors such as not filling sanctioned positions through open competition, appointing teachers at low salaries through basic local procedures, and the lack of training arrangements for teachers adversely affect the improvement of education quality.

In Shubhakalika Rural Municipality, Kalikot, even teachers without teaching license have been employed. Nabaraj Acharya, head of the education section of the municipality, says that these teachers, hired through the municipality’s grant for various reasons and constraints, will not be continued from the next fiscal year.

According to Acharya, in Shubhakalika, 46 teachers have been employed under the municipality’s grant: 11 at secondary level, 19 at lower secondary, and 16 at primary level. Primary-level teachers receive a monthly salary of 15,000 rupees, lower secondary 17,000 rupees, and secondary 25,000 rupees. “The federal government does not send permanent teachers, and due to the necessity of running schools, we are compelled to hire teachers at low salaries,” he says.

Educationist Bidyanath Koirala states that the Teacher Service Commission’s inability to recommend teachers through open competition has created a shortage of qualified teachers in community schools. He says the biggest impact of hiring “whatever teachers are available” is on the quality of education. “The Teacher Service Commission was established to recommend qualified and capable teachers for community schools, but when the Commission is turned into a pendulum and teachers are recruited arbitrarily, how can the quality of education improve?” he asks.