The Dzongkha Teacher Behind the Taxi Wheel

The full numbers

Several Dzongkha Regular Contract Teachers (RCTs) with Post Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) qualifications — many of them self-financed trainees who paid for their own training at Paro College of Education (PCE) — had their contracts terminated in December 2025. They were not reissued. The MoESD and RCSC controlled the termination process.

• Process: RCSC collected the list of teachers and issued termination letters in collaboration with MoESD
• Notice period: Many received notice only during the first or second week of December — despite what should have been a three-month notice period under contract terms
• Affected demographics: PGDE qualifications, ages 29–37, served in dzongkhags including Sarpang and across the country
• Three representatives of the affected PGDE-RCTs appealed their case directly to the Prime Minister — with no success
• Self-financed: Many invested heavily in their own training (PCE fees from various sources), believing teaching would provide stable employment in a country with documented teacher shortages
• Alternative career paths blocked: Teachers in PGDE-Dzongkha lack the English background to apply to teach other subjects under the general subject category. PTE examinations (which would allow overseas work) are valid only two years; some had let them lapse
• Remote-school willingness: Teachers in urban areas often reluctant to serve in remote locations; displaced RCTs were willing to do so — but were displaced anyway
• Per the Bhutanese, 16 May 2026: “In some remote dzongkhags, Dzongkha is being taught by general teachers or even English teachers due to the shortage of subject specialists” — at exactly the same time as the PGDE Dzongkha teachers were being terminated

Imagine this

A 36-year-old Dzongkha teacher who graduated from Tango Monastery, pursued self-financed PGDE at PCE, served as an RCT for several years, receives an email in early December 2025: contract not extended. He is now driving a taxi in Thimphu — one of the few alternatives available, requiring certain criteria he has yet to fulfill. His training: a monastery in eastern Bhutan, then a college of education to formally qualify, then years of classroom service. His current outcome: navigating Thimphu traffic for 12-hour shifts. A 29-year-old PGDE teacher, served in Sarpang until December last year, breaks down emotionally upon learning her contract would not be extended. She tells the reporter: “My father is struggling with depression, and during such a difficult time, I feel helpless because I do not have a job.” Her husband supports the family on a single income. Another 29-year-old teacher: “With the little income he earns, we are managing to survive. As a husband, it is deeply shameful and painful that I am unable to contribute. This teaching career has made life extremely difficult for me.” And meanwhile, in remote dzongkhags, schools continue without Dzongkha specialists. The teachers who could teach there have been terminated; the schools that need them remain understaffed.

Where this came from

The Bhutanese civil service operates on a strict establishment-based model administered by the RCSC. Position counts are controlled centrally; any reduction at the national level cascades to individual termination notices, regardless of where the geographic shortage is. The PGDE-trained RCTs were a category that emerged in the post-2010 period when the country expanded teacher training to address subject-specialist gaps. The training was substantially self-financed (signalling individual commitment) and produced classroom-ready Dzongkha specialists at a time when the country was struggling to staff Dzongkha-medium instruction across the country. But the RCSC’s position planning and the MoESD’s contract management operated on a separate logic — total establishment numbers, contract terms, budget envelopes. When the national position count was adjusted, the contracts ended. The remote-area shortage was a different bureaucratic problem.

Why this matters now

This case sits at the centre of several converging issues:

• Civil service paradoxes (#18, #20, #34) — Bhutan over-hires and over-terminates simultaneously; the structural rebalancing is failing
• Education paradox (#58 — Cambridge curriculum without infrastructure) — same MoESD that promises a world-class curriculum cannot retain its own qualified teachers
• Emigration (#13, #54, #55) — every PGDE-RCT terminated who had completed PTE is one more migration candidate
• Cultural sovereignty — Dzongkha is the national language; its formal teaching is a cultural-policy priority; staffing failures in this subject sit at the centre of the national identity project And the wider message to the next generation of teachers: Bhutan’s professional certification system does not guarantee professional employment.

What it should be

• Position planning should be geographically disaggregated — shortages in remote dzongkhags should be filled before terminations in urban areas
• Contract terms should be honoured — three-month notice is a contractual obligation, not a courtesy
• Self-financed certification holders deserve priority retention if they’re willing to serve where the country needs them
• Cross-coordination between RCSC and MoESD should reconcile establishment numbers with operational subject-shortage maps before issuing termination notices

How others do it

• Finland — teachers are highly trained and highly valued; the system maintains a buffer of qualified specialists rather than terminating during establishment adjustments
• Singapore — teacher career paths are designed for long-term commitment; lateral moves and re-deployment occur within the system rather than termination
• South Korea — teaching is a high-status profession with structural protections against arbitrary termination
• Bhutan: terminates the professionally trained PGDE Dzongkha specialists it spent years certifying, while the dzongkhag shortage they were trained to fill continues

The question we should be sitting with

If we trained these Dzongkha teachers, certified them, deployed them — what exactly went wrong in the system that we are now terminating them while continuing to have shortages? And what message does this send to the next generation of self-financed teacher trainees about whether to invest in Bhutanese certification?