TRE-4: what's confirmed, what isn't

Advertisement 15/2026, dated 22 September 2026, 24 pages. It opens by cancelling advertisement 14/2026 of 18 August — the one most sites are still describing — and replaces it in full: a new application window, a single written examination in place of Prelims and Mains, one application instead of one per level, and a flat fee. The vacancies, the TET requirements and the age limits carry over unchanged. If a page you are reading says 14/2026, or says 1–30 September, it is describing a cancelled document.

25 September to 26 October 2026, with payment closing on 25 October — a day before the form. The fee is ₹100, flat, the same for every candidate, and you pay it once however many levels you are eligible for: one application carries all your preferences. That last part changed. Under the cancelled advertisement each level was a separate application with its own ₹100, and sites repeating that will have you pay twice for an application the portal will not accept. Add ₹200 only if you do not enter an Aadhaar number. One Time Registration must be done afresh on bpsconline.bihar.gov.in even if you hold one from an earlier BPSC examination.

Still not announced, and this is now the third document in a row that would have carried it and does not. We have read all 24 pages of 15/2026: it gives an application window and nothing more. The old excuse is gone too — there is no second stage left to say “it cannot be dated yet” about. The “22–27 September” that circulated all summer was BPSC's own tentative calendar row for the original single-exam design, under a header reading “All dates are tentative” against advertisement number “NA”; that week has now passed with no exam, which settles it.

32,388, and 15/2026 reprints the figure unchanged: 3,847 (classes 1–5) + 8,563 (6–8) + 3,877 (9–10) + 16,101 (11–12). Every subject row and every category row sums exactly to its printed total, in both advertisements. Classes 11–12 alone are 49.7% of the exam, and Chemistry alone is 3,695 posts. Vacancies for Bangla, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Pali, Prakrit, Arabic, Farsi, Fine Arts, Dance and Special School teachers are not in this count and will be notified separately.

No. Settled, in the Commission's own words: selection is “लिखित परीक्षा (वस्तुनिष्ठ) के आधार पर” — on the basis of one objective written examination. No Preliminary examination, no Main examination, no interview, and no second application. This is a reversal: 14/2026 confirmed Prelims + Mains in August, the Chief Minister told candidate representatives on 27 August that it would be one stage, BPSC suspended the process on 31 August, and 15/2026 settled it on 22 September. If you prepared for Prelims, nothing is lost — those General Studies areas are Part II of the one paper.

One objective paper for your level: 150 questions, 150 marks, 2 hours 30 minutes, one mark each. Part I is 30 questions of language and is qualifying only. Classes 1–5 then have Part II of 120 questions and no subject paper. Classes 6–8, 9–10 and 11–12 have Part II of 40 and Part III — your subject — of 80, so the subject paper is two-thirds of everything that counts. The 300 marks that circulated for months was never a BPSC figure for TRE-4; it was Rajasthan REET's, borrowed by analogy.

Classes 1–5: Part II alone, 120 marks. Classes 6–8, 9–10 and 11–12: Part II plus Part III, 120 marks between them. Part I never counts at any level — you need 30% in it and that is all it does. Minimum qualifying marks are 40% general, 36.5% BC, 34% EBC, 32% for SC, ST, women and persons with disability. Atithi Shikshak weightage of 5 marks per year of service, capped at 25, is added only after you have reached those marks on your own.

Yes, one-third of a mark for every wrong answer — restated in 15/2026 word for word, one of the few things the redesign left completely alone. The trap is in how it is applied. Each question has five options, A to E, where (E) means “I do not wish to answer”. If you leave a question completely blank you are docked one-third anyway, exactly as if you had answered it wrong. To skip a question without losing marks you must actively darken (E). TRE 1–3 had no negative marking at all, so every candidate carrying habits from those papers is exposed to this twice over.

Confirmed, and identical across all four levels: Part I is 30 questions on English plus one of Hindi, Urdu or Bangla, you need at least 30% in it, and those marks do not enter the merit list. It is purely an elimination — the only part of the exam where a good score is worth nothing and a poor one ends your candidature. Several of the most-read Bihar aggregator sites list this part without mentioning that it eliminates.

You give preferences across the levels you are eligible for, inside one application, and exactly one result is declared for you — the “one candidate, one result” demand the protests of August were about. The Commission works down your preference order and stops at the first level you clear; your candidature for every level below it lapses automatically. The advertisement's own worked example runs 1. Class 11–12, 2. Class 1–5, 3. Class 6–8, 4. Class 9–10, 5. Class 9–10 Special School Teacher. Leave the column blank and the result is published for the HIGHER group only — blank is a choice, made for you. Set the order deliberately: it cannot be changed after submission and there is no second application to correct it in. A candidate may sit this examination at most five times. District allotment is NOT part of this: the Commission publishes the result and the Education Department allots the district afterwards, so there is no district-preference column at all.