Bihar orders removal of teachers appointed with unrecognized NIOS DElEd qualification

The Bihar government has initiated action to remove thousands of school teachers appointed with the 18-month Diploma in Elementary Education (DElEd) awarded by the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), directing district officials to cancel appointments made on the basis of the qualification, which is not recognized for teacher recruitment in the state.

In a directive issued by the Directorate of Primary Education, all District Education Officers (DEOs) have been asked to identify teachers recruited using the 18-month NIOS DElEd certificate and terminate their services without delay.

The order follows a departmental review that found appointments had been granted to candidates despite the qualification being declared ineligible under Bihar's recruitment norms.

The state had already settled the issue in 2023, when the Education Department formally stated that the 18-month NIOS DElEd course would not be treated as a valid teaching qualification for recruitment in government schools.

The same condition was incorporated into the Bihar Public Service Commission's (BPSC) Teacher Recruitment Examination (TRE) 3 notification released in February 2024.

The advertisement clearly specified that applicants holding the 18-month NIOS DElEd would not qualify for teaching positions in Classes 6 to 8.

However, candidates with the disputed qualification were still selected during the TRE 3 recruitment process. The BPSC held the examination in July 2024 to recruit nearly 87,000 teachers for primary, middle, and higher secondary schools across the state.

While the government has not officially disclosed how many appointments are under scrutiny, Education Department sources estimate that nearly 3,000 teachers could lose their jobs as a result of the latest order.

Officials have also been instructed to complete the exercise at the earliest so that the vacancies created after the cancellations can be added to the posts to be filled through the forthcoming TRE 4 recruitment process.