Teaching licence in Nepal: how to become a teacher

Under the rules, a person who has not obtained a teaching licence cannot be a candidate for a teacher’s post. That covers permanent appointments in community schools, and schools use it when filling temporary and grant-funded posts too. Private schools have not been bound by the same rule in practice, but they increasingly ask for it, and it is the only route to the government scale.

• You must be a Nepali citizen, aged 18 or over and under 40.
• A licence for a higher level is valid for the levels below it.
• Without an education degree: graduates in science, mathematics, English, accounts, computer, civil or electrical engineering, animal husbandry or crop science may sit the secondary examination without training. They must complete the ten months of training within five years of appointment, and cannot be promoted until they do.

The pass mark was raised to 50 by the ninth amendment to the rules. An older English translation still in circulation gives 40, which is out of date. The commission sets the question pattern in the examination notice, and it has been objective in recent years. The syllabus covers the teaching profession, child development, curriculum and assessment, and the subject for the level.

1. 1Confirm your level from the table above, and whether your degree counts as training.
2. 2Watch for the advertisement on tsc.gov.np and in Gorkhapatra. The examination is not held on a fixed date each year.
3. 3Apply online through the commission’s system with your certificates, citizenship and photograph, and pay the fee stated in the notice.
4. 4Prepare from the syllabus published with the notice, and from past papers.
5. 5Sit the examination at the centre assigned to you.
6. 6Collect the licence once the result is published. Keep the number; you will write it on every application.

The licence makes you eligible. A permanent post is won in the commission’s open competition for third-class posts at each level; second and first class are filled by promotion.

• Only candidates who pass the general paper sit the subject paper.
• The written result counts half of the general marks plus the subject marks.
• Of the 25 interview marks, up to 5 are for experience as a temporary or relief teacher, up to 5 for qualifications and up to 15 for the interview.
• More candidates than vacancies are called to interview: two extra for one to five posts, rising to 20% extra for more than forty.

• Private schools hire directly: a CV, an interview and a demonstration class, sometimes a written subject test.
• They ask for the qualification for the level and, more and more, the teaching licence.
• Montessori and pre-primary posts usually ask for a Montessori training certificate instead.
• The teacher CV example is written for school applications, the job application letter guide has a sample for a teacher, and vacancies are on the jobs board.