Thousands of teachers in Bihar who secured the 18-month Diploma in Elementary Education (DElEd) from the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) may lose their jobs after the Directorate of Primary Education directed all District Education Officers (DEOs) to terminate the services of teachers appointed on the basis of the qualification, which the state government does not recognise for recruitment.
The department issued the directive after an internal probe found that several candidates with the 18-month NIOS DElEd qualification had been appointed despite the qualification being declared ineligible for teacher recruitment. District authorities have now been asked to identify such teachers and end their services at the earliest.
The Education Department had, in 2023, clarified that the 18-month NIOS DElEd programme would not be considered a valid qualification for teacher appointments in the state. The recruitment advertisement issued in February 2024 for the Bihar Public Service Commission's (BPSC) Teacher Recruitment Examination (TRE) 3 also explicitly stated that candidates holding the 18-month NIOS DElEd would not be eligible for appointments to Classes 6 to 8.
Despite the eligibility condition being clearly mentioned in the advertisement, several candidates with the qualification were recruited under TRE 3. The BPSC conducted the recruitment examination in July 2024 to fill around 87,000 teaching posts in primary, middle, and higher secondary schools across the state.
While the government has not released the official number of affected teachers, sources in the Education Department estimate that nearly 3,000 teachers could face termination under the latest directive.
The department has instructed all DEOs to complete the termination process without delay so that vacancies created by the action can be filled during the upcoming TRE 4 recruitment drive.
