Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Social Science · Class 8
Indian Talent Olympiad National Social Studies Olympiad (NSSO) Class 8: 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.
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.
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.
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. Indian Talent Olympiad publishes no current-class versus previous-class split for any of its papers. On this paper that silence is doing a lot of work: much of the published list is the previous class's book, and the body says nothing about how the two are weighted.
Syllabus
Social Science syllabus mapped to NCERT Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 8, 2026-27)
Ch 1. Natural Resources and Their Use
Olympiad syllabus label: Natural Resources (ITO chapter 16)
Ch 2. Reshaping India's Political Map
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 8 list — its post-1947 history stops at India gains Independence (5)
Ch 3. The Rise of the Marathas
Olympiad syllabus label: Wars (6), for the Anglo-Maratha wars only — the Marathas are on ITO's Class 7 list
Ch 4. The Colonial Era in India
Olympiad syllabus label: British rule (3); Colonialism (7); Wars (6) — Plassey, the Carnatic wars, Dual Government in Bengal
Ch 5. Universal Franchise and India's Electoral System
Olympiad syllabus label: Our Constitution and Parliament (12), in part; Caste System (15) for its social half
Ch 6. The Parliamentary System: Legislature and Executive
Olympiad syllabus label: Our Constitution and Parliament (12)
Ch 7. Factors of Production
Olympiad syllabus label: Economic Activities (17), in part — ITO names factors of production on its Class 7 list, not here
Ch 8. World Geography: Some Glimpses
Olympiad syllabus label: Vegetation and Wildlife (18); Inside and Outside of the Earth (19); Structure of Ocean Floor (21) — ITO puts world-regional geography on its Class 7 list
Ch 9. India's Long Road to Independence
Olympiad syllabus label: Freedom Movement (4); India gains Independence (5)
Ch 10. A Journey Through Indian Architecture
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 8 list — Architecture and Literature is chapter 7 of its Class 6 list
Ch 11. The Role of the Judiciary in Our Society
Olympiad syllabus label: Judiciary System of India (14)
Ch 12. Citizenship: Rights and Duties
Olympiad syllabus label: Human Rights and UNO (13), in part — ITO carries Citizenship and Human Rights on its Class 6 list
Ch 13. Dynamics of Population
Olympiad syllabus label: Population (20)
Ch 14. India's Urban Landscape
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 8 list
Ch 15. Cultural Currents: 13th to 17th Centuries
Olympiad syllabus label: Not on ITO's Class 8 list — Bhakti and Sufi movements is chapter 2 of its Class 7 list
Read this page together with our Class 7 one, because the two lists are the finding. Indian Talent Olympiad's Class 8 social studies list is ancient India — the rise of Jainism and Buddhism, the Mauryas, Kushans, Guptas and Vardhanas, and the southern dynasties — which is what the 2026-27 CLASS 7 book teaches. Its Class 7 list is medieval and modern, which is what the Class 8 book teaches. Searching every field of the Grade 8 curator sheet rather than only its chapter titles, "Gupta", "Maurya", "Kushan", "Vardhana", "Chola", "Jainism" and "Buddhism" each return zero rows, and so do nine of the dynasty names in ITO's chapter 11 — Kadambas, Pallavas, Shatavahanas, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, Badami, Kanchi, Manyakheta and Dwarasamudra. The Hoysalas are the exception and do appear, once, so this is fifteen names rather than all of them. Four more ITO chapters have no chapter in the Class 8 book on the same test: Ancient Civilization of India and World, Geographical Features and Pre-historic India, Money-Saving and Investment, and National Income and Sectoral Aspects — "saving", "investment", "national income" and "ocean floor" all return zero rows at Class 8. Not everything is a gap, and it is worth saying which things are not: Natural Resources, Population, the Judiciary, Our Constitution and Parliament, the Freedom Movement, British rule and Colonialism all map cleanly onto chapters of the book, and ITO's Caste System chapter is covered inside the book's Universal Franchise chapter. So roughly half this paper is the child's own year and roughly half is last year's. A Class 8 child who did well in Class 7 social science is better prepared for this paper than the Class 8 book alone would make them, which is an unusual thing to be able to say and the practical reason to revise last year's history rather than skip it. One oddity to know about before you print the list: ITO's Class 8 page runs from Chapter 7 straight to Chapter 9 and then numbers on to 24, so it publishes twenty-three chapters under a numbering that implies twenty-four. Nothing on the page says whether a chapter was withdrawn or lost in an edit, and we are not going to guess — ask the body if the difference matters to your preparation.
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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.
Your child qualified for Level 2 — what that actually means
Level 2 means four different things at four different olympiad bodies. At CREST it is the top 55.56% of the class. At SOF it is roughly the top 5%. Here is each body’s published rule, the score it took at SOF last year for Classes 6 to 8, and the two things SOF says about Level 2 that most parents never see.
Or see every 2026-27 exam date and registration cutoff in one table, or browse all the papers we cover.
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