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Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Science · Class 7

Indian Talent Olympiad Science Olympiad (ISO) Class 7: 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 25 August 2026. Exam dates re-checked on 14 October 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

Two different calendars sit above, and which one applies to your child depends on how they are entered. 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. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes them with the caveat that they are tentative and that "the final exam schedule will be updated 20 days prior", and once a set or slot is selected it cannot be changed. Note that the science paper sits one day after the maths paper on every school Set and one day before it on both online slots — if your child is entered for both, check which order applies to your route.

Registration: Registration closes on published dates rather than a rolling window. Through the school there are three windows, and which one applies depends on the date you read this: Set A's cutoff was 10 September 2026 and has passed, Set B's is 22 October 2026 (extended from 10 October) and Set C's is 10 November 2026. Set A moved twice before it closed, from 31 August to 5 September and then to 10 September, each time announced only by the date changing on the schedule page, which still reads "LAST DATE TO REGISTER – SET A Extended Till 10 th September, 2026" — so treat the two later dates as figures ITO can move too. The school collects ₹175 per student per subject, of which ₹150 is remitted to ITO and ₹25 is retained 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. Those three are the school route; the individual online route's 30 October 2026 is a separate clock from all three — a school that missed a Set does not cost the family the direct route, and the direct route closing does not extend a Set. Two things about that school deadline that ITO's schedule page does not say and its fee page does. First, it is a POSTAL deadline: the completed registration form, the student list and the fee as a demand draft have to reach Indian Talent Olympiad's Mumbai office by the cutoff, by registered post or courier, so the envelope has to leave the school several days before the cutoff rather than on it. Second, the two pages disagree, and on two of the three windows. The fee page calls them Slot 1, 2 and 3 where the schedule calls them Set A, B and C, and re-read on 14 October 2026 it still instructs schools to send everything to arrive "on or before 31st August 2026 (Slot 1) / 10th October 2026 (Slot 2), 10th November 2026" — the Set A date the body has since moved off twice, and the Set B date it has since extended to 22 October. Only Set C, 10 November 2026, is the same on both. Ring the body before your school posts a draft.

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. 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 IEO (English) — if your school picks 17 November 2026

    Registrations must reach SOF by 18 October 2026

  • SOF ISO (Science) — if your school picks 19 November 2026

    Registrations must reach SOF by 20 October 2026

  • Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) — School route — Set B (extended from 10 October)

    Registration closes 22 October 2026

  • SOF IHO (Hindi) — if your school picks 23 November 2026

    Registrations must reach SOF by 24 October 2026

  • SOF IMO (Maths) — if your school picks 26 November 2026

    Registrations must reach SOF by 27 October 2026

Get the full calendar on WhatsApp

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 14 October 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-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 questions—50 marks · 65 minutes

The 65 minutes above is the school route. Indian Talent Olympiad gives the individual online route 45 minutes for the same 50 questions — both figures are the body's own, in identically worded rows on its two schedule pages, and neither page mentions the other. This matters more on the science paper than on any other ITO paper we cover, because Section 1 draws on seventeen published topics rather than the twelve or thirteen elsewhere.

Every question is worth one mark, including the five Higher Order Thinking questions. Indian Talent Olympiad does not publish a current-class versus previous-class split for any of its papers — so unlike SOF, which states 60% current class and 40% previous, there is no published proportion here. That absence is worth reading against the syllabus note above: with natural resources sitting at Class 6 in the current spine and atomic structure at Class 8, this paper draws on both directions of the spine without saying how much of either.

Syllabus

Science syllabus mapped to NCERT Curiosity (Class 7, 2026-27)

Ch 1. The Ever-Evolving World of Science

Olympiad syllabus label: Not named on ITO's Class 7 list

Ch 2. Exploring Substances: Acidic, Basic and Neutral

Olympiad syllabus label: Acids, Bases And Salts; Classification Of Substances

Ch 3. Electricity: Circuits and their Components

Olympiad syllabus label: Electricity

Ch 4. The World of Metals and Non-metals

Olympiad syllabus label: Metal And Non Metals

Ch 5. Changes Around Us: Physical and Chemical

Olympiad syllabus label: Classification Of Substances (the physical-versus-chemical-change half)

Ch 6. Adolescence: A Stage of Growth and Change

Olympiad syllabus label: Control And Co-Ordination — the hormonal half only

Ch 7. Heat Transfer in Nature

Olympiad syllabus label: Heat

Ch 8. Measurement of Time and Motion

Olympiad syllabus label: Physical Quantities And Measurement

Ch 9. Life Processes in Animals

Olympiad syllabus label: Circulation; Component Of Food; Organization Of Living Things

Ch 10. Life Processes in Plants

Olympiad syllabus label: Organization Of Living Things; Component Of Food

Ch 11. Light: Shadows and Reflections

Olympiad syllabus label: Light Propagation

Ch 12. Earth, Moon, and the Sun

Olympiad syllabus label: Not named on ITO's Class 7 list

Start with the number, because it is the finding. Indian Talent Olympiad names seventeen topics for Class 7 science and thirteen for Class 6 — and Section 1 is 35 questions at both classes. The paper does not get longer between the two years; it gets wider, and each topic gets thinner cover. Eleven of the seventeen land on a chapter of the 2026-27 Curiosity book, above. Six do not, and they are six different stories — every one checked against all five grade sheets of our own curriculum spine before being called anything. Two are genuinely absent from both the book and our Class 7 practice: Sound And Its Propagation, which sits at Class 9 in the current spine, and Tissue: Plant And Animal, also Class 9. Those are the two to plan for from a source outside school. Reproduction In Living Things is the same shape at Class 7 — the Class 7 book covers only the menstrual cycle, inside the Adolescence chapter, and the rest waits for Classes 8 and 9. Atomic Structure is next year's chapter rather than a gap: it opens at Class 8 as atoms and molecules and is taught properly at Class 9. Natural Resources And Calamities splits in half — natural resources, soil and conservation are all covered, at Class 6, so your child has met them a year early; the calamities half returns nothing at any class, from us or from the book. And Waste Water Management is the one true blank: searched across every field of Classes 6 to 10, it does not exist in the current spine at all, and it was a Class 7 NCERT chapter until 2023. One check came back the other way and is worth stating so this list does not read worse than it is: Control And Co-Ordination looks missing and is half-taught — the Adolescence chapter carries endocrine glands and hormones, so only the nervous-system half waits, and that one is Class 10. Two topics run the other direction as well: the Curiosity chapters on how science evolves and on Earth, Moon and Sun are not on ITO's list at all, so strong classwork there earns nothing on this particular paper. The chapter mapping above is ours, not ITO's.

Try it yourself

Today's science question

Practice

Practice in the ITO-S format

OlympAI has not published a practice paper for this exam yet. When one is ready, this page is where it will appear — nothing to sign up for and no phone number to hand over.

See what is on this paper

Frequently asked questions

No. Two bodies use the same three letters. SOF renamed its National Science Olympiad to the International Science Olympiad for 2026-27, and that paper is 50 questions for 60 marks in 60 minutes, sat on a date the school picks, with registration closing 30 days before it and a published 60/40 current-to-previous-class split. Indian Talent Olympiad's Science Olympiad is 50 questions for 50 marks in 65 minutes across three sections, on one of three Set dates or a separate online slot, with cutoffs of 10 September, 22 October (extended from 10 October) and 10 November. Separate exams, separate fees, separate syllabi. If the school says "ISO", ask which body.

Practice these exact chapters, free

3 practice quizzes a day in each subject free, 10 olympiad-pattern questions each, and 5 with your choice of length and difficulty on OlympAI PRO — for Class 7 science, 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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