SilverZone Foundation · Social Science · Class 6
International Social Studies Olympiad (iSSO) Class 6: syllabus, dates and exam pattern (2026–27)
Everything you need in one place — the exact NCERT chapters this paper tests, all 3 exam dates, the registration window, and the full marking scheme. Updated for the 2026–27 session.
Last verified against SilverZone Foundation's own site on 19 August 2026. Exam dates re-checked on 24 August 2026.
2026–27 exam dates
Date 1
29 September 2026
Date 2
28 October 2026
Date 3
1 December 2026
SilverZone publishes these under the heading "Tentative Examination Schedule for the year 2026-27" — they are the body's own dates, but SilverZone has not marked them final, so treat them as indicative until your school confirms. Worth noticing on this paper in particular: the first date, 29 September 2026, is the earliest of any SilverZone paper our subjects touch, four weeks ahead of the English one and a fortnight ahead of maths.
Registration: SilverZone published one registration cutoff covering every paper it runs, iSSO included: 30 September 2026, on the same schedule it headed "Tentative Examination Schedule." SilverZone moved this date: its own exam-date endpoint returned 31 August 2026 on every read from 18 August to 1 September 2026 and 30 September 2026 from 2 September, with no announcement anywhere on its site. On this paper the new date creates a contradiction in SilverZone's own schedule, and we are not going to smooth it over: iSSO's first exam date is 29 September 2026 and the registration cutoff is 30 September 2026 — one day AFTER it. Both figures come from the body's own endpoint. Treat 28 October and 1 December as the dates a school can realistically still enter for, and ask SilverZone directly if you want the 29 September sitting. Registration is through participating schools only: "Social Studies (iSSO)" is a subject checkbox on SilverZone's school registration form and there is no individual route. Ask your coordinator now, or write to info@silverzone.org to check whether a late registration is still possible.
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 5 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 2 September 2026. Bodies do move dates — we re-check every Monday.
Exam pattern
How the iSSO paper is structured
| Section | Questions | Marks per question | Section total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theme A — India and the World: Land and the People | 6 | 2.5 | 15 |
| Theme B — Tapestry of the Past | 6 | 2.5 | 15 |
| Theme C — Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions | 6 | 2.5 | 15 |
| Theme D — Governance and Democracy | 6 | 2.5 | 15 |
| Theme E — Economic Life Around Us | 6 | 2.5 | 15 |
| Scholar's Zone | 5 | 5 | 25 |
| Total | 35 questions | — | 100 marks · 40 minutes |
The section names are not SilverZone's invention — they are the five themes of the 2026-27 NCERT Class 6 social science book, in the book's own order, which is why this paper maps onto school work more cleanly than any other on this site. The five themes carry 15 marks each, so no theme can be skipped and none is worth cramming over another; history, geography, civics and economics are weighted identically at 6 questions apiece. The Scholar's Zone is 5 questions at 5 marks — a quarter of the paper on one seventh of the questions — and SilverZone names no topics for it. At 35 questions in 40 minutes this is about 69 seconds a question, the same clock as SilverZone's English, maths and science papers. Two limits of what the body publishes, stated rather than filled in: iSSO runs for Classes 1 to 10 (its maths, science and English papers go to 12), and its iSSO page carries no level structure at all, where the iOM, iOS and iOEL pages describe a Level 2 and iOEL a Level 3 — so nothing here says iSSO does or does not have one. Ask your coordinator.
SilverZone publishes no current-year/previous-year split for iSSO, so nothing is claimed here. The theme-wise table is the whole of what the body publishes about the paper's content.
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: Theme A — India and the World: Land and the People
Ch 2. Oceans and Continents
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme A — India and the World: Land and the People
Ch 3. Landforms and Life
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme A — India and the World: Land and the People
Ch 4. Timeline and Sources of History
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme B — Tapestry of the Past
Ch 5. India, That Is Bharat
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme B — Tapestry of the Past
Ch 6. The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme B — Tapestry of the Past
Ch 7. India's Cultural Roots
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme C — Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions
Ch 8. Unity in Diversity, or 'Many in the One'
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme C — Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions
Ch 9. Family and Community
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme D — Governance and Democracy
Ch 10. Grassroots Democracy — Part 1: Governance
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme D — Governance and Democracy (SilverZone lists this as "Governance")
Ch 11. Grassroots Democracy — Part 2: Local Government in Rural Areas
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme D — Governance and Democracy (listed as "Local Government in Rural Areas")
Ch 12. Grassroots Democracy — Part 3: Local Government in Urban Areas
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme D — Governance and Democracy (listed as "Local Government in Urban Areas")
Ch 13. The Value of Work
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme E — Economic Life Around Us
Ch 14. Economic Activities Around Us
Olympiad syllabus label: Theme E — Economic Life Around Us
Nineteen exam pages on this site name topics a child's current book no longer contains. This one names none, and that is the finding rather than an absence of one. Every chapter SilverZone publishes for iSSO Class 6 is a chapter of Exploring Society: India and Beyond, in the book's order, under the book's own five themes — fourteen for fourteen. The only naming difference anywhere in the list is that SilverZone splits the book's three-part "Grassroots Democracy" chapter into its three subtitles, which is a cosmetic difference and is shown above. Set that against SilverZone's own Class 8 maths list, where not one entry is a Ganita Prakash chapter title, and against the Class 6 lists CREST, Indian Talent Olympiad and Humming Bird publish, all of which are written against a science book that no longer exists: the difference is not that some bodies are careful and others are not, it is that Class 6 social science was rewritten into a theme structure clean enough for a body to adopt wholesale. The practical consequence for a Class 6 parent is unusually simple — revising the school book is revising for this paper, for 75 of the 100 marks. The other 25 are the Scholar's Zone, and SilverZone names no topics for it, so nobody can tell you what to revise for those. On our own side, the curator taxonomy for Grade 6 social science (sheet Grade6_SST) carries 62 topic rows across those fourteen chapters plus three in its olympiad-scope bucket — scale and distance, map legend and symbols, and direction and orientation, all map skills that sit on top of chapter 1. SilverZone names none of the three, so they are not a gap in this paper; they are extra ground our Class 6 practice covers, and map work is a reasonable guess at the kind of thing a Scholar's Zone asks. A guess is all it is, and it is labelled one.
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Guides that answer the next question
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 to 5 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.
SOF IMO vs SilverZone iOM: which should your Class 6 child take?
SOF IMO and SilverZone iOM both test Class 6 maths, but the exam pattern, syllabus split, and scoring are different enough to matter. Here is a side-by-side comparison to help you choose — or why most families end up doing both.
Or see every 2026-27 exam date and registration cutoff in one table, or browse all the papers we cover.
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