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Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Science · Class 6

Indian Talent Olympiad Science Olympiad (ISO) Class 6: syllabus, dates and exam pattern (2026–27)

Everything you need in one place — the exact NCERT chapters this paper tests, all 5 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 14 August 2026.

2026–27 exam dates

Through school — Set A

9 October 2026

Through school — Set B

2 December 2026

Through school — Set C

18 December 2026

Individual online — slot 1

4 December 2026

Individual online — slot 2

8 January 2027

The three Set dates are the school route — the school picks one set and the child sits the paper with the class. The two slot dates are the individual online route a family can take without the school, and they are different dates, not alternatives to the same sitting. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes the online dates as tentative, stating that "the final exam schedule will be updated 20 days prior". Once a set or slot is selected it cannot be changed.

Registration: Through the school, registration closes on three published dates: 31 August 2026 for Set A, 10 October 2026 for Set B and 10 November 2026 for Set C. The school collects ₹175 per student per subject, remitting ₹150 to ITO and keeping ₹25 for organising costs. Directly, without the school, individual online registration for Classes 1 to 10 closes 30 October 2026 for slot 1, at ₹500 per subject — one of only four direct routes across the bodies we cover, alongside CREST, Unified Council's NSTSE and Humming Bird. The 31 August school cutoff is the earliest registration deadline of the season across every paper we track, and the later individual date does not extend it.

Free — deadline calendar

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. Four do not have to: CREST (online, no published cutoff), Unified Council for NSTSE (₹350 direct against ₹150 via school), 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 the four.

Closing next

  • Indian Talent Olympiad — Set A

    Registration closes 31 August 2026 · all five subjects

  • SOF IEO (English)

    If your school picks 30 September 2026, registration closes 31 August 2026 · English

  • SOF IMO (Maths)

    If your school picks 23 October 2026, registration closes 23 September 2026 · Maths

Get the full calendar on WhatsApp

Every deadline in this box was checked against that exam body's own website on 11 August 2026. Bodies do move dates — we re-check every Monday.

Exam pattern

How the ITO-S paper is structured

SectionQuestionsMarks per questionSection total
Section 1 — Subjective (syllabus)35135
Section 2 — Logical Reasoning10110
Section 3 — Higher Order Thinking (HOTs)515
Total50 questions50 marks · 65 minutes

All 50 questions carry one mark, including the five Higher Order Thinking questions, so the paper is not weighted toward its harder end. Section 2's ten reasoning questions are a fifth of the marks and come from no science book — series completion, coding-decoding, blood relations, direction sense, Venn diagrams, mirror and water images, figure matrices, ranking, and cubes and dice. Indian Talent Olympiad does not publish a current-class versus previous-class split.

Syllabus

Science syllabus mapped to NCERT Curiosity (Class 6, 2026-27)

Ch 1. The Wonderful World of Science

Olympiad syllabus label: Physical Quantities Of Measurement (the units and measurement half)

Ch 2. Diversity in the Living World

Olympiad syllabus label: Living Organism And Its Classification

Ch 3. Mindful Eating: A Path to a Healthy Body

Olympiad syllabus label: Food And Nutrition

Ch 4. Exploring Magnets

Olympiad syllabus label: Magnetism

Ch 5. Measurement of Length and Motion

Olympiad syllabus label: Motion; Physical Quantities Of Measurement

Ch 6. Materials Around Us

Olympiad syllabus label: Classification Of Materials; Substances In Daily Use

Ch 7. Temperature and its Measurement

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 6 list — new in the 2026-27 book

Ch 8. A Journey through States of Water

Olympiad syllabus label: Not named separately on ITO's list; nearest is Changes Around Us, which is broader

Ch 9. Methods of Separation in Everyday Life

Olympiad syllabus label: Compound And Mixtures

Ch 10. Living Creatures: Exploring their Characteristics

Olympiad syllabus label: Movement In Living Beings

Ch 11. Nature's Treasures

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 6 list

Ch 12. Beyond Earth

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 6 list

Indian Talent Olympiad publishes thirteen Class 6 science chapters: Physical Quantities Of Measurement, Motion, Light, Electric Circuits, Magnetism, Living Organism And Its Classification, Substances In Daily Use, The Cell, Movement In Living Beings, Food And Nutrition, Compound And Mixtures, Changes Around Us and Classification Of Materials. Four of those thirteen have no chapter in the 2026-27 Curiosity book at all: light, electric circuits, the cell, and changes around us in the reversible-versus-irreversible sense. Two of the four are physics, and the cell is an entire biology unit that now sits in Class 8. A Class 6 child revising only Curiosity has prepared for nine of the thirteen. It runs the other way too — Curiosity now teaches temperature, the states of water, natural resources and the solar system, none of which appear on ITO's Class 6 list. This is the second body in two days whose published Class 6 science syllabus predates the current book: CREST's list has the same shape. The mapping in the table above is ours rather than ITO's, since the body publishes topic names with no map to the new book.

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Frequently asked questions

No. Two different bodies now use the abbreviation ISO for a science olympiad, and the collision is new this year: SOF renamed its National Science Olympiad (NSO) to the International Science Olympiad (ISO) for the 2026-27 session, and Indian Talent Olympiad already called its science paper ISO. They are different exams — SOF's is 50 questions for 60 marks in 60 minutes with a 3-mark Achievers Section, sat on a school-chosen date with registration closing exactly 30 days before it; ITO's is 50 questions for 50 marks in 65 minutes with every question worth one mark and fixed published cutoffs. If a school circular says "ISO", ask which body it means before working out a deadline.

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