Is there negative marking?

Indian Talent Olympiad publishes a marks-awarded scheme only — one mark per question across all three sections — and states no deduction for a wrong answer on its exam-pattern page. All questions are multiple choice. Confirm against the instruction sheet on the paper, and until then attempt every question.

Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Social Science · Class 7

Indian Talent Olympiad National Social Studies Olympiad (NSSO) 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 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.

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 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

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 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. Twenty-seven chapters into 40 questions is the tightest ratio of any paper on this site — on average one and a half questions a chapter — so breadth matters more here than depth.

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 construction of squares. That last item is the one difference between the classes: ITO ends the Class 7 and Class 8 reasoning lists with construction of squares and the Class 6 list with cubes and dice. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes no current-class versus previous-class split for any of its papers — which on this paper is a live question rather than a formality, since much of its list is next year's book.

Syllabus

Social Science syllabus mapped to NCERT Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 7, 2026-27)

Ch 1. Geographical Diversity of India

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 7 list — its geography is world-regional and does not name India's physical divisions

Ch 2. Understanding the Weather

Olympiad syllabus label: Weather And Climate (ITO chapter 13); Air and Water (17)

Ch 3. Climates of India

Olympiad syllabus label: Weather And Climate (13)

Ch 4. New Beginnings: Cities and States

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 7 list — early Indian states sit on its Class 8 list

Ch 5. The Rise of Empires

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 7 list — the Mauryas are chapter 10 of its Class 8 list

Ch 6. The Age of Reorganisation

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 7 list — Kushans and Vardhanas are chapter 10 of its Class 8 list

Ch 7. The Gupta Era: An Age of Tireless Creativity

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 7 list — the Guptas are chapter 10 of its Class 8 list

Ch 8. How the Land Becomes Sacred

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 7 list — new framing in the 2026-27 book

Ch 9. From the Rulers to the Ruled: Types of Governments

Olympiad syllabus label: Democracy (21)

Ch 10. The Constitution of India — An Introduction

Olympiad syllabus label: Our Constitutions (26); Fundamental Rights and Duties (22)

Ch 11. From Barter to Money

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 7 list — money is chapter 22 of its Class 8 list

Ch 12. Understanding Markets

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

Ch 13. The Story of Indian Farming

Olympiad syllabus label: Natural Resources — Soil, Minerals (18), for the soil half only

Ch 14. India and Her Neighbours

Olympiad syllabus label: Asia, Africa and Europe (11), in part

Ch 15. Empires and Kingdoms: 6th to 10th Centuries

Olympiad syllabus label: New kings and Kingdom (3), in part; Arabs and Turkish Invasions (6)

Ch 16. Turning Tides: 11th and 12th Centuries

Olympiad syllabus label: Sultans of Delhi (4); Bhakti and Sufi movements (2), for its early phase

Ch 17. India: A Home to Many

Olympiad syllabus label: Tribes, Nomads and Settled Communities (20), in part

Ch 18. The State, the Government and You

Olympiad syllabus label: Democracy (21); Our Defence Forces (23)

Ch 19. Infrastructure: Engine of India's Development

Olympiad syllabus label: Human Environment — Settlement, Transport and Communication (16)

Ch 20. Banks and the Magic of Finance

Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 7 list — Tax and its Importance (25) is its only public-finance entry

This is the widest gap between a published olympiad list and the book a child is actually studying that we have measured on any paper on this site, and it is not a wording difference — it is a year. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes twenty-seven Class 7 chapters, and its history half is medieval and modern: Vijayanagara and Bahmani, Bhakti and Sufi, the Sultans of Delhi, the Mughal empire, the British empire, the freedom struggle, social and religious reforms, the Industrial Revolution. The 2026-27 Class 7 book is ancient and early medieval: the Mauryas, the age of reorganisation, the Guptas, the Cholas, the 6th to 12th centuries. Searching every field of the Grade 7 curator sheet rather than only its chapter titles, "Mughal", "Maratha", "Vijayanagar", "Bahmani", "colonial", "industrial" and "factors of production" each return zero rows; all of them return rows in the Grade 8 sheet. The geography half runs the same way: Europe, Africa, the Americas, Australia, Antarctica, world climate zones and natural regions return zero rows at Class 7 and all sit in the Class 8 chapter World Geography: Some Glimpses, while ITO puts them at Class 7. And the traffic goes both ways — the Mauryas, Kushans, Guptas, Vardhanas and Cholas that fill the Class 7 book are on ITO's CLASS 8 list, as its chapters 10 and 11. To a first approximation ITO's Class 7 and Class 8 social studies lists are the two books swapped. One narrower thing worth knowing before you buy a guide: ITO's chapter 3 names the Nayakas, the Palegaras, the Naada Prabhus and the Wodeyars of Mysuru. We searched every field of the Class 6, 7 and 8 sheets and all four return nothing — these are not topics a year early or a year late, they are outside the three books entirely. None of this makes the paper unsittable; it makes "revise the school book" the wrong preparation plan for it, which is the opposite of what ITO's own page implies when it says the syllabus is the one set by the schools.

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.

See what is on this paper

Frequently asked questions

It depends on the route. Through the school, Set A's cutoff was 10 September 2026 and has passed, Set B's is 31 October 2026 (extended from 10 October, then from 22 October) and Set C's is 10 November 2026 — and Set A has moved twice, from 31 August to 5 September and then to 10 September, each time announced only by the date changing on the schedule page. If a family registers directly on the individual online route, slot 1 closes 30 October 2026 and slot 2 publishes no cutoff at all. One caution about the school deadline: Indian Talent Olympiad requires the form, the student list and the fee as a demand draft to physically reach its Mumbai office by that date, by registered post or courier, so the envelope has to leave the school several days before the cutoff rather than on it.

Largely not, and this is the paper where that matters most. Indian Talent Olympiad's Class 7 list is medieval and modern history — Vijayanagara and Bahmani, the Delhi Sultans, the Mughals, the British empire, the freedom struggle, the Industrial Revolution — plus world-regional geography. The 2026-27 Class 7 book, Exploring Society: India and Beyond, is ancient and early-medieval India: the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Cholas, the 6th to 12th centuries, with India-focused geography. We checked topic by topic against the curator taxonomy for Class 7 rather than by reading the two lists side by side, and the Mughals, the Marathas, Vijayanagara, colonialism, the Industrial Revolution and factors of production all return nothing at Class 7 and everything at Class 8. Plan preparation around ITO's published list, not around the school book, and expect to work a year ahead on history.

On Indian Talent Olympiad's Class 8 list, as its chapters 10 and 11 — Mauryas, Kushans, Guptas and Vardhanas, then the southern dynasties. So the Class 7 book your child is reading this year is largely what ITO tests in Class 8, and what ITO tests this year is largely next year's book. If your child sits NSSO in both Class 7 and Class 8, that is not wasted: the Class 7 school year is preparation for the Class 8 paper, just not for this one.

Yes, and for social science this is the only body on this site where the answer is yes. Indian Talent Olympiad runs an individual online route for Classes 1 to 10. Slot 1 registration closes 30 October 2026 with the social studies paper on 7 December 2026; slot 2's paper is on 5 January 2027. The individual fee is ₹500 per subject against the ₹175 a participating school collects. SOF, CREST, Unified Council and Humming Bird either run no social science paper at all or run it through schools only, and SilverZone runs iSSO through schools by default: its individual registration form at r.silverzone.org has a paper list we have not been able to confirm.

Still choosing

Every olympiad a Class 7 child can sit in 2026–27

All the papers at this class, grouped by whether your school has to enter your child or you can register directly — with each body's own dates and cutoffs.

Related guides

Other olympiad syllabus guides

Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Class 6

ITO-SST Class 6 — social science syllabus, dates and pattern

Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Class 8

ITO-SST Class 8 — social science syllabus, dates and pattern

SilverZone Foundation · Class 7

ABHO Class 7 — hindi syllabus, dates and pattern

SilverZone Foundation · Class 7

iOEL Class 7 — english syllabus, dates and pattern

Keep reading

Guides that answer the next question

Which olympiad should my Class 7 child take?

Most Class 7 olympiad advice compares exams. The question that actually decides it is who can enter your child — the school, or you. Here is the route first, then the subjects, then the dates.

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.

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 7 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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