Is the NSSO Class 7 syllabus the same as my child's school syllabus?

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.

Where do the Mauryas and the Guptas sit, if not on the Class 7 paper?

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.

Can a parent register a Class 7 child directly, without the school?

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, SilverZone, CREST, Unified Council and Humming Bird either run no social science paper at all or run it through schools only.

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, 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 6 September 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 deadlines, and they are five weeks apart. Through the school, registration closes on three published dates: 10 September 2026 for Set A, 10 October 2026 for Set B 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. Four 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 the four.

Closing next

Indian Talent Olympiad — Set A
Registration closes 10 September 2026 · all five subjects
SOF IMO (Maths)
If your school picks 23 October 2026, registration closes 23 September 2026 · Maths
SOF IEO (English)
If your school picks 27 October 2026, registration closes 27 September 2026 · English
SilverZone — every paper
Registration closes 30 September 2026 · all five subjects
The body publishes this date but has not marked it final — confirm with your school before treating it as fixed.

Get the full calendar on WhatsApp

Or read the full calendar on the site — no sign-up

Every deadline in this box was checked against that exam body's own website on 5 September 2026. Bodies do move dates — we re-check every Monday.

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

Sample questions

Practice questions in the ITO-SST format

Free resources

Get free sample papers

Instant access to premium chapter-wise practice questions and comprehensive syllabus guides curated by experts. Delivered straight to your phone.

Latest pattern sample papers (NSO/IMO/ISO)
Complete NCERT syllabus blueprints
100% free · Zero registration forms needed

Select child's class

Select subject

Get Sample Papers

Free service · Response within a few hours · We keep your details private

Frequently asked questions

It depends on the route. Through the school, Set A closes 10 September 2026, Set B 10 October 2026 and Set C 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 a school starting the paperwork this week is working to a shorter clock than the date suggests.

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

iOM Class 7 — maths syllabus, dates and pattern

SilverZone Foundation · Class 7

iOS Class 7 — science syllabus, dates and pattern

Keep reading

Guides that answer the next question

Which olympiads can you register for without the school?

Most olympiad bodies register students through the school — but four take a family directly: CREST, Indian Talent Olympiad’s individual online route, Unified Council’s NSTSE, and Humming Bird. Here is exactly how each one works, what it costs, and the deadline that applies to each.

The registration deadline has passed — can my child still sit an olympiad?

A closed olympiad deadline is almost never the season closing. Of the three routes due to close on 31 August 2026, only SOF’s actually did — SilverZone moved its cutoff to 30 September and Indian Talent Olympiad extended Set A twice, to 10 September. Twelve of SOF’s thirteen sittings in Maths, Science, English, Hindi and Social Science were never on that clock at all, and four bodies take a registration straight from a family. Here is what is still open, subject by subject, with the date each route closes on.

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

Unlimited olympiad-pattern questions 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, the hardest ones re-solved by a second model that has to agree.

Start free