Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · English · Class 8
Indian Talent Olympiad English International Olympiad (EIO) Class 8: syllabus, dates and exam pattern (2026–27)
Everything you need in one place — the exact NCERT chapters this paper tests, its published exam dates, the registration window, and the full marking scheme. Updated for the 2026–27 session.
Last verified against Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO)'s own site on 21 September 2026.
2026–27 exam dates
Through school — Set A
5 October 2026
Through school — Set B
26 November 2026
Through school — Set C
16 December 2026
Individual online — slot 1
3 December 2026
Individual online — slot 2
7 January 2027
The three Set dates are the school route: the school picks one Set for English and the child sits it with the class. The two slot dates are the individual online route a family can take without the school, on different dates from all three Sets. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes the online dates as tentative and says the final schedule will be updated 20 days before the exam. Once a Set or a slot is chosen it cannot be changed. The body publishes one English schedule for Classes 1 to 12, so these are the same dates a Class 6 or Class 7 child sits.
Registration: Two routes with separate clocks. Through the school, registration closes on three published dates: 10 September 2026 for Set A, which has passed, 10 October 2026 for Set B and 10 November 2026 for Set C. Set A moved twice before it closed, from 31 August to 5 September and then to 10 September, each time on the day it was due, so treat the two later dates as figures the body can move too. The school collects ₹175 per student per subject, keeps ₹25 for organising costs and sends ₹150 to Indian Talent Olympiad. The school deadline is a postal one: the body's fee page requires the registration form, the student list and the fee as a demand draft to reach its Mumbai office by the cutoff, by registered post or courier, so the envelope has to leave the school days before the date rather than on it. Directly, without the school, individual online registration for Classes 1 to 10 closes 30 October 2026 for slot 1, at ₹500 per subject; slot 2 has no published cutoff. For English that is one of several direct routes — CREST, Unified Council's online UIEO and Humming Bird also take a family without the school.
The deadline is set by your school, not by you
Most parents find the exam date and assume they have until then. The registration window closes long before it, and for some papers it has already started closing. Here is how it actually works.
- Your school registers your child and your school picks which of the 2–3 dates the class sits. The family does not choose.
- For SOF papers, registrations must reach SOF exactly 30 days before that chosen date — and once the school has chosen, the date cannot be changed.
- Most bodies register through the school. These do not have to: CREST (online, no published cutoff), Unified Council — directly for NSTSE itself at ₹350 against ₹150 through a school, and on three online sittings, NSTSE-Online, UIMO-Online and UIEO-Online, at ₹354 each including GST — Indian Talent Olympiad on its individual online route (its own later dates — Slot 1 closes 30 October), and Humming Bird (online, ₹150 a subject, no published cutoff — its two dates are picked as you register). CREST is the simplest of them. SilverZone also runs an individual registration form alongside its default school route; which papers it offers we have not been able to confirm.
Closing next
SOF IMO (Maths) — if your school picks 23 October 2026
Registrations must reach SOF by 23 September 2026
SOF IEO (English) — if your school picks 27 October 2026
Registrations must reach SOF by 27 September 2026
SilverZone Foundation — Every SilverZone paper
Registration closes 30 September 2026
The body publishes this date but has not marked it final — confirm with your school before treating it as fixed.
SOF ISO (Science) — if your school picks 30 October 2026
Registrations must reach SOF by 30 September 2026
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) — School route — Set B
Registration closes 10 October 2026
Or read the full calendar on the site — no sign-up
Every deadline in this box was re-read against the exam body's own website on or after 20 September 2026. Each table carries its own source link and its own date. Bodies do move dates, so check against the body's own site before you act on one.
Exam pattern
How the ITO-E paper is structured
| Section | Questions | Marks per question | Section total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section 1 — Subjective (syllabus) | 35 | 1 | 35 |
| Section 2 — Logical Reasoning | 10 | 1 | 10 |
| Section 3 — Higher Order Thinking (HOTs) | 5 | 1 | 5 |
| Total | 50 questions | — | 50 marks · 65 minutes |
The 65 minutes above is the school route. The individual online route gives the same 50 questions 45 minutes — both are the body's own figures, on its two schedule pages. Registering directly means planning for 54 seconds a question instead of 78. The body states that the Higher Order Thinking questions are drawn from Section 1, so 40 of the 50 questions come from the English chapter list below.
Every question is worth one mark, including the five Higher Order Thinking questions. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes no current-class versus previous-class split for any of its papers, so no proportion is claimed here. Two Class 8 chapters — Infinitive Participle and Gerund, and Sequencing — are also on the Class 7 list by name, so a child who sat EIO last year has met them once already.
Syllabus
English syllabus mapped to NCERT Poorvi (Class 8, 2026-27)
Ch 1. The Wit that Won Hearts
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (ITO chapter 12)
Ch 2. A Concrete Example
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12)
Ch 3. Wisdom Paves the Way
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12); Composition (10) — personal narrative
Ch 4. A Tale of Valour: Major Somnath Sharma and the Battle of Badgam
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12) — biography
Ch 5. Somebody's Mother
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12) — poetry
Ch 6. Verghese Kurien — I Too Had A Dream
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12); Composition (10) — biographical sketch
Ch 7. The Case of the Fifth Word
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12) — inference
Ch 8. The Magic Brush of Dreams
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12)
Ch 9. Spectacular Wonders
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12); Word Power (1); Composition (10) — descriptive writing
Ch 10. The Cherry Tree
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12); Word Power (1)
Ch 11. Harvest Hymn
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12) — poetry; Figures of Speech (8)
Ch 12. Waiting for the Rain
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12)
Ch 13. Feathered Friend
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12); Word Power (1)
Ch 14. Magnifying Glass
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12); Word Power (1); Composition (10) — explanatory writing
Ch 15. Bibha Chowdhuri: The Beam of Light that Lit the Path for Women in Indian Science
Olympiad syllabus label: Comprehension (12) — biography
Indian Talent Olympiad names fourteen Class 8 English chapters: Word Power, Clauses, Infinitive Participle and Gerund, Modal and Auxiliary Verbs, Tenses, Types of Sentences, Transformation of Sentences, Figures of Speech, Grammar Exercise, Composition, Sequencing, Comprehension, Idioms and Proverbs, and Logical Reasoning. Poorvi reaches more of that list at Class 8 than at 6 or 7 — it feeds Comprehension throughout, Word Power and Composition in several chapters, and Figures of Speech through Harvest Hymn — but clauses, non-finite verbs, modals, tenses and sentence types and transformations are still taught outside the book. Our own Class 8 English practice covers most of the list: clauses, modals and auxiliaries, tenses, sentence types, transformation, figures of speech, composition and comprehension all have a matching topic. Three do not. Infinitives, participles and gerunds are only touched — we teach telling finite from non-finite verbs, not how the three forms are used. Sequencing, putting jumbled sentences in order, we carry at Class 6 only. Idioms and proverbs have no Class 8 topic in our material. Those three are worth working from an ordinary grammar book. Grammar Exercise names no topic of its own. Logical Reasoning is the separate ten-question Section 2, and for Class 8 ITO names fifteen topics inside it, ending in construction of squares. The chapter mapping above is ours, not the body's.
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Guides that answer the next question
Which olympiads can you register for without the school?
Most olympiad bodies register students through the school — but some take a family directly: CREST, Indian Talent Olympiad’s individual online route, Unified Council’s NSTSE and Humming Bird, and SilverZone runs an individual form of its own. Here is exactly how each one works, what it costs, and the deadline that applies to each.
Which olympiad should my Class 8 child take?
The Class 8 paper list is the same 25 papers offered at Class 6 and Class 7. What changes is that the bodies stop agreeing on what Class 8 means — one paper we mapped chapter by chapter is roughly half last year’s book. The routes, the dates and the syllabus catch, read off each body on 8 September 2026.
Or see every 2026-27 exam date and registration cutoff in one table, or browse all the papers we cover.
Practice these exact chapters, free
Up to 20 olympiad-pattern questions a day free, in each subject, and 200 a day on a paid plan — for Class 8 english, generated from the same NCERT chapters above and written to the shape of the real olympiad papers, then automatically checked before they can be served, the hardest ones re-solved by a second model that has to agree.
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