A D grade in Nepal's NEB system - marks between 35 and 39 - is a passing grade, and in fact it is the lowest passing grade on the scale, carrying a grade point of 1.6. It is only the grade below it, NG (Not Graded, for marks below 35), that means the student has not cleared the subject. So if a report card shows a D in a subject, the student has passed that subject, just at the bottom band. The important nuance is that NEB does not really run a blunt "pass/fail" verdict on the whole exam anymore; it grades each subject on its own and gives a route to improve a weak one. This post explains exactly where D sits, what NG means, and how the grade-improvement route works - and why you should always confirm the current rule with NEB or your school, because these boundaries and policies have been revised more than once.
The Full NEB Grade Boundary Table
Every subject under the National Examination Board - SEE at Grade 10 and +2 at Grades 11 and 12 - is converted from a raw mark out of 100 into a letter grade and a grade point, using one fixed scale. This is the table to check any report card against:
Notice that the bands are not all the same width. A+ covers an 11-point range, most of the middle grades cover exactly 10 points each, and D covers only 5 points (35 to 39). That narrow D band is the thin margin between passing a subject and landing in NG. For the full mechanics of how these grades combine into an overall GPA, see the complete NEB grading and GPA guide.
What a D Grade Actually Means
A D means the student scored somewhere between 35 and 39 marks in that subject and has cleared it. The grade point of 1.6 then feeds into the overall GPA exactly like any other grade point - it is averaged in, not treated as a special case.
A few things to keep straight about D:
- It is a pass, not a fail. A student with a D in one subject and higher grades elsewhere has passed all of them. There is no separate "you got a D so you fail" rule.
- It is a thin band. Because D only spans 35 to 39, a student sitting here is close to the NG line. A few marks either way changes the outcome, which is why combining practical and theory marks correctly before conversion matters so much.
- It still counts against a strong GPA. A single D pulls an otherwise high average down noticeably, because grade points are averaged, not weighted. That is separate from passing - the student has passed, the number is just lower.
The one place D does not automatically clear a subject is where NEB sets a subject-specific minimum on the practical or theory component separately from the overall mark, so schools configure those per-subject rules rather than assuming the 35 floor covers everything.
What NG Means, and Why It Is Not the Old "Fail"
NG stands for "Not Graded" and applies to any subject where the student scored below 35. This is the grade that sits below D, at grade point 0.0.
It is tempting to read NG as the modern word for "fail," but that misreads how the current system works. Under the old SLC division system, a single aggregate percentage below roughly 32 percent failed the entire exam, and the only route back was retaking everything the following year. NEB's letter-grade system, introduced from 2072 BS (2015/16), replaced that cliff with a per-subject outcome. An NG is scoped to the one subject where it happened. A student can be graded normally in every other subject and only need to address the single subject that came in below 35.
NG is a per-subject result, not a whole-exam verdict. A student with five clean grades and one NG has not "failed the exam" - they have one subject to lift through the grade-improvement route, while the rest of the result stands. Confirm the exact current procedure with NEB or your school, because the naming and process have been revised over the years.
NEB's Grade-Improvement Route
Instead of a hard fail, NEB provides a way to improve a weak subject. The general shape of it is a grade-increment or supplementary exam that lets a student re-sit specific subjects to raise a low grade or clear an NG, rather than repeating the whole year.
The practical points to understand:
- It is subject-scoped. You re-sit the subject or subjects that need improving, not the entire exam.
- The rest of the result stands. Grades in subjects the student already cleared are not disturbed while they re-sit another.
- The specifics change. How many subjects can be improved, the eligibility window, the fees, and the timing are all set by NEB and have been adjusted over the years. Do not rely on what applied to an older sibling's batch.
Because these details shift, the most reliable thing you can do is check the current rule directly with NEB or your school's exam coordinator before making any decision based on it. Treat a blog post - including this one - as an explanation of how the system is structured, not as this year's exact procedure.
Pass, Fail, and Why the Language Is Slippery
Parents and students still ask "did I pass or fail," and the honest answer is that NEB's structure does not map cleanly onto that binary anymore. Here is how to think about it precisely:
- A subject with D or above is cleared.
- A subject with NG is not cleared and needs the grade-improvement route.
- The overall result is a set of per-subject grades plus an overall GPA, not a single pass/fail stamp.
Where "pass" and "fail" still get used loosely is in downstream decisions. A specific stream, college, or scholarship may set its own minimum, such as a certain overall GPA or a minimum grade in particular subjects. Those are policy rules the institution layers on top of the grading table, not part of the NEB grade scale itself. The grade table tells you whether a subject is cleared; an admissions cutoff tells you whether a result is good enough for a particular next step. If you are trying to translate a GPA into the rough percentage language people are used to, read how NEB GPA converts to percentage first, because that conversion is an approximation, not an exact reversal.
For the other letter that confuses report-card readers - the difference between NG and codes like NE - see what NE and NG mean on a Nepal report card.
The Bottom Line
D is a pass - the lowest one, at grade point 1.6, for marks between 35 and 39. NG, for anything below 35, is the grade that means a subject has not been cleared, but it is a per-subject outcome with a grade-improvement route, not the old whole-exam fail. The system was deliberately built to stop one weak subject from derailing an entire academic year. Because NEB has revised these boundaries and policies over time, treat this as a structural explanation and confirm the exact current rule with NEB or your school before acting on it.
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