Private School Fees in Kathmandu: What Municipalities Allow

Three Kathmandu municipalities set the monthly fee a private school may charge. Budhanilkantha, Nagarjun and Kirtipur publish minimum and maximum figures by grade, and they sort schools into A, B and C bands. The floor is Rs 2,400 a month for early childhood classes; the ceiling is Rs 7,755 for Grade 10.

Budhanilkantha, Grade by Grade

Budhanilkantha publishes the fullest schedule of the three. The early years carry a single rate; from Grade 1 the fee depends on which band the school sits in.

The Ceilings in Nagarjun and Kirtipur

The spread is the thing to notice. A Grade 10 place costs up to Rs 7,436 in Kirtipur and Rs 5,950 in Nagarjun, a difference of about Rs 18,000 across a school year for the same grade in the same valley.

What the A, B and C Bands Mean for a Bill

The bands only start to bite from Grade 1. At that point an A-band school may charge Rs 4,290 a month where a C-band school is held to Rs 2,860. Over ten months that is Rs 42,900 against Rs 28,600, so the band a school sits in matters more to the annual bill than the grade does at this level.

Where the Caps Do Not Reach

These figures cover private schools following the national curriculum in three municipalities. They do not describe the international schools, and the gap is not small. Schools running Cambridge or IB programmes are quoted in the range of Rs 1,000,000 to 1,900,000 a year, which is two orders of magnitude away from a capped monthly fee. If a number you have been given looks nothing like the table above, check which curriculum it covers before assuming it is wrong.

Before You Compare Two Schools

• Ask which municipality the school sits in. Three publish caps; the rest of the valley does not.
• Ask for the band. A and C differ by Rs 1,430 a month at Grade 1, and schools do not always volunteer it.
• Ask what the monthly fee excludes. Admission, examination, transport and uniform are billed separately and are not covered by the cap.
• Ask for the figure in writing, with the grade and the academic year on it.

The caps above were published in April 2026. Municipal schedules are revised, so treat any figure here as a starting point for the question rather than the answer.