Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Social Science · Class 6
Indian Talent Olympiad National Social Studies Olympiad (NSSO) Class 6: 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 6 September 2026. Exam dates re-checked on 22 October 2026.
2026–27 exam dates
Through school — Set A
6 October 2026
Through school — Set B
27 November 2026
Through school — Set C
8 January 2027
Individual online — slot 1
7 December 2026
Individual online — slot 2
5 January 2027
The three Set dates are the school route — the school picks one Set for the subject and the child sits it with the class. The two slot dates are the individual online route a family can take without the school, and they are separate sittings on separate dates, not alternatives to the same paper. 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 a slot is chosen it cannot be changed.
Registration: Two routes, two separate deadlines. Through the school, registration closes on three published dates: 10 September 2026 for Set A, 31 October 2026 for Set B (extended from 10 October, then from 22 October) and 10 November 2026 for Set C. Set A has moved twice — it read 31 August 2026 until 1 September, then 5 September, and Indian Talent Olympiad extended it to 10 September on 5 September itself, both times on the morning the old date was due to close and neither time with an announcement. The school collects ₹175 per student per subject, keeps ₹25 for organising costs and sends ₹150 to Indian Talent Olympiad. Read the school deadline as a postal one rather than a form-filling one: the body's fee page requires the completed 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. Directly, without the school, individual online registration for Classes 1 to 10 closes 30 October 2026 for slot 1, at ₹500 per subject — and for social science this is the only direct family route on this site, across all six bodies we track. Slot 2 has no published cutoff at all.
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 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
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) — Individual online route — Slot 1
Registration closes 30 October 2026
SilverZone Foundation — Every SilverZone paper
Registration closes 31 October 2026
The body publishes this date but has not marked it final — confirm with your school before treating it as fixed.
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) — School route — Set B (extended twice, from 10 October)
Registration closes 31 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 22 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-SST 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. Indian Talent Olympiad gives the individual online route 45 minutes for the same 50 questions — both figures are the body's own, in identically headed rows on its two schedule pages, and neither page mentions the other. If you are registering your child directly rather than through the school, plan for 54 seconds a question instead of 78. Section 3 is not a separate syllabus: the body states that the Higher Order Thinking questions are drawn from Section 1, so 40 of the 50 questions come from the chapter list below and 10 do not.
All 50 questions carry one mark, including the five Higher Order Thinking questions, so the paper is not weighted towards its harder end. Section 2's ten reasoning questions are a fifth of the marks and come from no social science book — series completion and missing characters, alpha-numeric sequences, analogy and classification, coding-decoding, blood relations, direction sense, logical Venn diagrams, puzzles, mathematical operations, analytical reasoning, mirror and water images, embedded figures, figure matrices, ranking, and cubes and dice. The last of those is the one difference between the classes: ITO ends the Class 6 reasoning list with cubes and dice, and the Class 7 and Class 8 lists with construction of squares instead. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes no current-class versus previous-class split for any of its papers.
Syllabus
Social Science syllabus mapped to NCERT Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 6, 2026-27)
Ch 1. Locating Places on the Earth
Olympiad syllabus label: Globes and Maps (ITO chapter 13)
Ch 2. Oceans and Continents
Olympiad syllabus label: Asia, Europe and Africa (14); Maps — Asia, Europe and Africa (16)
Ch 3. Landforms and Life
Olympiad syllabus label: Not named on ITO's Class 6 list — its world geography is regional rather than landform-based
Ch 4. Timeline and Sources of History
Olympiad syllabus label: Sources of History (1)
Ch 5. India, That Is Bharat
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 6 list — new framing in the 2026-27 book
Ch 6. The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation
Olympiad syllabus label: Life and Early Humans (2); Civilization (3)
Ch 7. India's Cultural Roots
Olympiad syllabus label: Vedic Age (4); Religion and Culture of ancient India (5)
Ch 8. Unity in Diversity, or 'Many in the One'
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 6 list; Community life (10) is narrower
Ch 9. Family and Community
Olympiad syllabus label: Community life (10)
Ch 10. Grassroots Democracy — Part 1: Governance
Olympiad syllabus label: Government — Nations, States, City, Village (11)
Ch 11. Grassroots Democracy — Part 2: Local Government in Rural Areas
Olympiad syllabus label: Government — Nations, States, City, Village (11)
Ch 12. Grassroots Democracy — Part 3: Local Government in Urban Areas
Olympiad syllabus label: Government — Nations, States, City, Village (11)
Ch 13. The Value of Work
Olympiad syllabus label: Towards gender equality (8), in part — ITO names no work or livelihoods chapter
Ch 14. Economic Activities Around Us
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 6 list; Ancients Traders — India and world (9) is historical trade, not the modern sectors this chapter teaches
Indian Talent Olympiad publishes sixteen Class 6 social studies chapters: Sources of History, Life and Early Humans, Civilization, Vedic Age, Religion and Culture of ancient India, Kings and Kingdoms, Architecture and Literature, Towards gender equality, Ancients Traders — India and world, Community life, Government — Nations States City Village, Citizenship and Human Rights, Globes and Maps, Asia Europe and Africa, Natural Resources and Energy, and Maps — Asia Europe and Africa. Its own syllabus page says the list is "as prescribed by the schools", and its exam-pattern page says questions come from the updated syllabus of boards including CBSE. Held against the book a CBSE Class 6 child actually opens in 2026-27, that is true of eleven of the sixteen and not of five. Kings and Kingdoms, Architecture and Literature, Citizenship and Human Rights, and Natural Resources and Energy have no chapter in Exploring Society: India and Beyond at Class 6 — we searched every field of the Grade 6, 7 and 8 curator sheets, not just the chapter titles. Three of the four are next year's or the year after's work: kings and kingdoms is Class 7, architecture is a chapter in both Class 7 and Class 8, and natural resources opens the Class 8 book. Human rights as a named topic is in none of the three books. The fifth, Ancients Traders, is a chapter of its own on ITO's list while the 2026-27 book handles ancient trade inside two other chapters. Running the other way, the book now teaches landforms, India That Is Bharat, unity in diversity, the value of work and modern economic activities, and ITO names none of them. The practical reading for a Class 6 parent: revising the school book covers most of this paper, and four topics on it will not be in that book at all.
Try it yourself
Today's social science question
Practice
Practice in the ITO-SST format
No — OlympAI does not publish a practice paper for this exam. OlympAI’s question bank covers maths, science and English. We hold no social science questions yet, so there is no social science paper to give you — for this body or any other.
Frequently asked questions
Related guides
Other olympiad syllabus guides
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Class 7
ITO-SST Class 7 — social science syllabus, dates and pattern
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Class 8
ITO-SST Class 8 — social science syllabus, dates and pattern
Unified Council · Class 6
NSTSE Class 6 — science syllabus, dates and pattern
Unified Council · Class 6
UIMO Class 6 — maths syllabus, dates and pattern
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Guides that answer the next question
SOF ISSO vs SilverZone iSSO: which social science olympiad
Two papers with almost the same name, built on opposite principles: SilverZone iSSO spreads its marks evenly across the five themes of your child’s book, SOF ISSO puts 45 of its 50 questions in one undifferentiated section and draws 30 per cent of them from last year. Their calendars barely overlap, and a third body takes a family without the school. Here is the side-by-side for Classes 6, 7 and 8, read off each body’s own surface on 29 September 2026.
Olympiad registration dates for October 2026, Classes 6–8
Eight olympiad registration dates for Classes 6 to 8 fall in October 2026. Five are SOF’s, each worked out from its 30-day rule and each real only if your school picks that sitting; two are Indian Talent Olympiad’s, published outright, one for schools and one for families; and one is SilverZone’s, the single date it publishes for every paper, which it moved to 31 October 2026. Here is each date, who it binds, and what to ask the school.
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
Free forever: 3 practice quizzes a day in each subject, 10 olympiad-pattern questions each, and 5 with your choice of length and difficulty on OlympAI PRO — for Class 6 social 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.
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