SOF ICSO (NCO) Preparation Classes Online, Classes 1 to 10

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The courses the SOF ICSO batches are built from

The paper tests computer science, AI and reasoning at the class's own level, so the preparation is built on the live courses we already teach for each age, with the section drills and timed papers added on top.

Classes 3 to 8 / the base

Computational Thinking and AI for Kids

Computers, algorithms, block coding and a first, honest look at AI, taught live to Class 3 to 8 students. The Computer Science and AI sections of the paper come straight out of it.

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Ages 9 to 12 / the programming

Python and AI for Kids

Real Python for children, with small AI projects they can explain. The student who has written a loop understands the loop question in the paper instead of guessing it.

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Classes 9 and 10 / the base

Computational Thinking and AI for Teens

For the top of the ICSO age range: the AI project cycle, data, models and Python, at the depth the Class 9 and 10 papers and the school's own AI subject both ask for.

Open the syllabus →

Ans. The short version

SOF ICSO is the International Computer Science Olympiad run by the Science Olympiad Foundation, the exam that was called the National Cyber Olympiad, NCO, until SOF renamed it; the old NCO web address now redirects to the ICSO one. It is a 60-minute multiple-choice paper for Classes 1 to 10, sat at school on one of two dates the school chooses, 24 September or 17 December 2026, with 35 questions for Classes 1 to 4 and 50 for Classes 5 to 10 in four sections: Logical Reasoning, Computer Science, Information Technology (for Classes 1 and 2) or AI, Robotics and Information Technology (for Classes 3 to 10), and the Achievers Section. Registration is through the school only. Modern Age Coders prepares students for it live online, in batches of five to ten grouped by class band, two classes a week, ending on the week of the December date. The first class is a free demo, and the group batch fee is shown on this page in your own currency.

Q1. What exactly is the paper?

The SOF ICSO format, straight from the organiser

Everything below is taken from SOF's ICSO pages on sofworld.org, read on 22 September 2026, including the one fact most preparation material has not caught up with: the exam has been renamed and its syllabus now names AI and robotics.

What SOF publishes	The ICSO paper
Name	SOF International Computer Science Olympiad (ICSO), formerly the National Cyber Olympiad (NCO). sofworld.org/nco redirects permanently to sofworld.org/icso.
Who can sit it	Classes 1 to 10
Where and when	At the student's own school, during school hours, on the date the school chose
Length	60 minutes
Questions	35 multiple choice (Classes 1 to 4); 50 multiple choice (Classes 5 to 10)
Sections, Classes 1 and 2	Logical Reasoning; Computer Science; Information Technology; Achievers Section
Sections, Classes 3 to 10	Logical Reasoning; Computer Science; AI, Robotics and Information Technology; Achievers Section
Syllabus	CBSE, ICSE/ISC and State Board syllabi, medium English
2026 dates	24 September (passed) or 17 December; a separate paper for each date; a school cannot change its date once chosen
Second round	Not described on the ICSO pages we read; we will update this page if SOF publishes one
How to enter	Through the school only. "Individual registrations by students are not accepted." Any school can register as a centre at no cost to the school.
Fee paid to SOF (via the school)	Rs 170 per student per olympiad in India, Bhutan and Nepal, plus up to Rs 30 the school may keep for its own costs; US$11 plus up to US$1 elsewhere. SOF's published figures, not ours.

Three things follow from that table. The rename matters because the books and question banks sold as "NCO preparation" were written for a paper that did not have an AI, Robotics and Information Technology section, and a Class 3 to 10 student preparing from them will meet a quarter of the paper cold. The December date matters because it gives a family reading this in the autumn a real runway, roughly ten to twelve weeks, which is enough to prepare all four sections properly rather than cram two. And the school-only entry matters because it means the first conversation is with your school, not with us.

One more distinction, since the names invite confusion: ICSO is not the Indian Computing Olympiad, the ZIO, ZCO and INOI pathway run by IARCS that leads to the International Olympiad in Informatics. That is a programming contest for strong Class 8 to 12 coders, solved in C++, Python or Java against a judge. ICSO is a multiple-choice paper about computer science at school level. A student who enjoys ICSO and wants the real thing should look at our informatics olympiad training.

Q2. What does each section test?

Four sections, and the one that changed

A child who uses a computer every day is not automatically good at any of these. Each section is a skill, and each is trained separately before the timed papers put them together.

Section 1

Logical Reasoning

The same reasoning section SOF uses across its olympiads: patterns and series, odd one out, coding and decoding, direction sense, mirror and water images, Venn diagrams, and in the older classes puzzles with several conditions. It is off the school syllabus, which is why it decides so many results. We teach the question families by name and the two or three methods each one yields to, then drill them until a series question is recognised in the first five seconds.

Section 2

Computer Science

The class's computer syllabus, asked precisely: what the parts of a computer do, software and operating systems, files and folders, the applications the class has met, networks and the internet, and, from the middle classes, the programming the school has introduced, whether block coding, the way our Scratch course starts, or a first text language. The questions are rarely hard; they are exact, and a child who "sort of knows" what an operating system is loses the mark to one who can say it in a sentence. We practise saying it in a sentence.

Section 3

AI, Robotics and Information Technology (Classes 3 to 10)

The new section, and the reason this page exists. What artificial intelligence is and is not, how a machine learns from examples, what a sensor and an actuator do in a robot, what a chatbot gets wrong, how a search engine and a browser differ, and the everyday IT the class already uses. For Classes 1 and 2 the section is Information Technology alone. We teach it the way our AI courses do: one small live example on screen for every idea, so the child has seen a model train or a robot arm respond before answering a question about it.

Section 4

Achievers Section

SOF describes it as topic-specific and harder, and it is where the ranking is decided. Fewer questions, tougher ones, on the same syllabus, with the reasoning of Section 1 and the content of Sections 2 and 3 combined. Most children skip it or guess it. Ours meet it in a dedicated block every week, from the first month, and learn what it rewards: reading a hard question without panic, and knowing when to leave one and return with the last four minutes.

The exact split of questions and marks between the sections varies by class, and SOF publishes it in its own materials rather than on the pages we quote here, so we do not reproduce a number we have not verified. Every student sees the split for their own class on the first day, from the official sample paper for that class, and the weekly plan is built around it.

Q3. Why understanding beats memorising in a 60-minute paper

The same question, answered by two students

A Class 6 Computer Science question about a loop, the kind that appears in every paper from the middle classes up. Watch what a memorised fact does when the question moves an inch.

The memorised answera fact from a book

"A loop repeats a set of instructions."

Question: How many times is "Hello"
printed?

  for i in range(1, 6):
      print("Hello")

Student: "range is 1 to 6, so 6 times."
# Wrong. The answer is 5.
# The student knows what a loop is
# and has never watched one run.

One mark lost in Section 2, and the same idea returns in the Achievers Section with a step of 2 and a condition inside. A definition is not an understanding.

The understood answertraced in class

  for i in range(1, 6):
      print("Hello")

i = 1  Hello
i = 2  Hello
i = 3  Hello
i = 4  Hello
i = 5  Hello
i = 6? No. range stops before 6.
Answer: 5 times.

# Then the Achievers version:
# range(1, 10, 2) prints how many?
# 1, 3, 5, 7, 9. Five. Traced in
# twenty seconds, not guessed.

Same question, same class, no definition recited. The student has traced loops on paper every week since the first month, which is what the section class is for.

Every section has a version of this. In the AI section it is the child who has watched a tiny model get a prediction wrong and can say why, rather than one who has memorised "AI learns from data". In Logical Reasoning it is the child who spots the rule in a series rather than recalling last year's series. The batch is built to produce the second kind of student, and it takes weeks rather than days.

Q4. How does the batch prepare?

Five steps between now and 17 December

Two live classes a week. One on a section and the ideas behind it, one on timed practice in the shape of the paper. The plan counts backwards from the date your school has chosen.

A placement check in the first week, by class and board
Twenty questions across the four sections at the child's class level, sat alone, then walked through together. It tells the teacher which section will earn the marks and which will lose them, and it tells you where your child stands before any preparation. The student's plan is written from it.
Logical Reasoning first, because it pays back fastest
It is off the school syllabus and most children have never been taught it. Two weeks of question families and methods, each session ending with a short set the student does alone and the teacher marks before the next class.
Computer Science and the AI section, taught with the thing on screen
Every idea in Sections 2 and 3 gets a live example, the way our problem-solving course teaches: a folder tree, a loop traced, a two-minute model trained on a handful of pictures, a robot simulation reacting to a sensor. Children remember what they watched happen, and the paper's questions describe things happening.
The Achievers Section gets its own block every week
From the first month, not the last. A small number of hard questions, attempted with a clock, then discussed: which ones to attempt, which to leave, how to come back. By December the section that frightens most children is the one ours have seen most often.
Timed papers in the exact shape of the real one
Four sections, the same question count for the class, 60 minutes, on questions the teacher wrote. We do not reproduce SOF's papers; we point you to SOF's own sample papers for the official look. Every mock is reviewed question by question the next class, and the last two weeks before 17 December are mocks and review only.

Timings are after-school and weekend slots in Indian Standard Time, fixed on the call once we know the class band, so a Class 2 batch is never asked to sit at a Class 9 hour. Families abroad on the same syllabus join the same batches; the fee for families outside India is shown in your own currency on this page.

Q5. Is this batch right for my child?

Who it suits, and who it does not

It suits

A Class 1 to 10 student whose school runs SOF ICSO, or still calls it NCO, and who wants to sit the December paper prepared. A child who is comfortable on a computer and has never been asked a precise question about one. A family that wants the preparation to leave real computer science and AI understanding behind, not a certificate alone.

It also suits

A student who sat NCO last year from an old book and met questions nobody had warned them about. A younger child in our Coding for Kids course whose school has just added the olympiad. A CBSE or ICSE family abroad whose school runs the SOF olympiads and wants an English-medium batch on the same syllabus at an evening hour in their own time zone.

It does not suit

A student whose school does not run SOF ICSO and cannot be persuaded to, because there is no individual entry and we will not pretend otherwise. A Class 11 or 12 student, since the exam stops at Class 10. A strong coder aiming at ZCO, INOI and the informatics olympiad pathway, who needs our olympiad training instead. A family looking for a crash session the week before the paper.

Q6. What does it cost?

Monthly fees, the same for every course we teach

Billed monthly, no admission fee, stop at any month end. The free demo class comes first, or book a Priority Live Demo for a full class today or tomorrow.

Group batch · by class band

₹1,499

per month

Five to ten students in the same class band
Two live classes a week, sections and timed practice
Placement check, weekly marked sets, reviewed mocks
Certificate on completion

Book the free demo

Mini batch

₹2,999

per month

Three to four students
Timings agreed around the family
More time per student on the Achievers Section

Ask about timings

One to one

₹4,999

per month

Private teaching on your own schedule
Pace set by the student, not the batch
The usual choice when December is close

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Related pages

The other olympiad, the harder contests, and the courses underneath

SOF's maths olympiad, the informatics pathway for strong coders, and the live courses this batch is built on.

SOF IMO preparation/sof-imo-preparation Coding challenges and contests/coding-challenges Informatics olympiad training/ioi-olympiad-informatics-training CBSE Class 10 AI (417) classes/cbse-class-10-ai-classes-online AI classes for CBSE Class 6 to 8/ai-classes-for-cbse-class-6-to-8 Coding for Kids: Scratch to Games, Apps and AI/courses/kids-coding-blocks-masterclass Problem Solving and Computational Thinking/courses/problem-solving-and-computational-thinking-for-kids Coding for Class 10/coding-for-class-10

Questions parents ask

About SOF ICSO and the preparation batch

Is NCO the same as ICSO?

Yes. SOF's National Cyber Olympiad, the NCO that older search results and many schools still name, is now the SOF International Computer Science Olympiad, ICSO. The old sofworld.org/nco address redirects permanently to sofworld.org/icso, which is how we confirmed the change on 22 September 2026. The paper, the classes it covers and the school-only registration are described on the ICSO pages; if your school's circular still says NCO, it means this exam.

Can I register my child for SOF ICSO directly?

No. SOF states that students should register through their respective schools only and that individual registrations by students are not accepted. Any school can become a registered exam centre at no cost to the school. We prepare students for the paper; we cannot enter them for it. If your school does not run it, the route is a conversation with the principal or the computer teacher, and we are happy to explain the exam to them.

Which classes can sit SOF ICSO?

Classes 1 to 10. That is narrower than SOF's maths olympiad, which runs to Class 12, so a Class 11 or 12 student looking for a computer science contest should look at the informatics olympiads instead, and we will point them there. We batch by class band: Classes 1 and 2, 3 to 5, 6 to 8, and 9 and 10, because the sections and the syllabus change at those boundaries.

What are the SOF ICSO dates for 2026?

SOF published two dates for this cycle: 24 September 2026 and 17 December 2026, with the school choosing one. The September date has passed, so for almost every family reading this the paper is on 17 December 2026, and our preparation timeline counts back from that week. Each date has its own question paper and a school cannot change its date once chosen.

What is actually in the paper?

A 60-minute objective test: 35 multiple-choice questions for Classes 1 to 4 and 50 for Classes 5 to 10, in four sections. For Classes 1 and 2 the sections are Logical Reasoning, Computer Science, Information Technology and the Achievers Section. For Classes 3 to 10 the third section becomes AI, Robotics and Information Technology. The paper is set on the CBSE, ICSE and State Board syllabi, in English, and sat at school during school hours.

Does the AI, Robotics and IT section need coding?

It needs understanding more than typing. The section, for Classes 3 to 10, asks what artificial intelligence, robots and everyday information technology are and how they behave: what a sensor does, what training data is, why a chatbot can be wrong, what a browser and a search engine each do. Our batches teach those ideas the way our AI courses do, with a small live example the child can see, so the answers come from understanding rather than a memorised list.

Do you use SOF's past papers in class?

No. SOF sells its own sample papers and reference books, and its site states that its content may not be copied. We point families to those for the official look of the paper and set our own practice in the same shape: four sections, the same question count for the class, 60 minutes, questions written by the teacher. The real paper is never the one you rehearsed, so this is also the better preparation.

Is there a second level for ICSO?

SOF's ICSO pages that we read on 22 September 2026 describe a single paper and do not describe a Level 2 the way the maths olympiad's pages do. We prepare for the paper as published and will update this page if SOF publishes a second round. Ask your school's coordinating teacher for the circular SOF sent them, which is the authoritative version for your school.

My child already does coding with you. Do they need this batch?

Often not. A student in our Computational Thinking and AI course or the Python and AI course already covers most of the Computer Science and AI sections; what they may lack is the Logical Reasoning section and the habit of a timed multiple-choice paper. For those students we usually suggest a short block of section practice inside their existing course rather than a second fee, and the mentor will say which on the call.

What happens after I send the form?

A mentor calls within a few hours, asks which class and board your child is in and whether the school has confirmed the December date, and books a free demo class at a time that suits you. The demo is a real session: a few Logical Reasoning questions worked live, one AI question explained with an example on screen, and one Achievers-style question with a clock. There is no card, no enrolment fee and no pressure on the call.

Start

The free demo is a real section class

Book it and your child joins a live session at their own class level: a handful of Logical Reasoning questions worked out loud, one AI question answered with a two-minute example on screen, and one Achievers-style question attempted with a clock. You watch from the next chair. Afterwards you know whether the teacher and your child click, and whether two live classes a week fit the household before December. If you would rather see a full 45 to 60 minute class today or tomorrow, book a Priority Live Demo instead.

Read first instead? The coding challenges guide compares the contests Indian students sit, and the SOF IMO page covers the maths olympiad most of the same schools run in the same term.

WhatsApp us · +91 91233 66161 · contact@modernagecoders.com

Every session is a live video class. Sending the form books a callback and nothing else; no seat is reserved or lost by it.

The courses the SOF ICSO batches are built from

Computational Thinking and AI for Kids

Python and AI for Kids

Computational Thinking and AI for Teens

The SOF ICSO format, straight from the organiser

Four sections, and the one that changed

Logical Reasoning

Computer Science

AI, Robotics and Information Technology (Classes 3 to 10)

Achievers Section

The same question, answered by two students

Five steps between now and 17 December

A placement check in the first week, by class and board

Logical Reasoning first, because it pays back fastest

Computer Science and the AI section, taught with the thing on screen

The Achievers Section gets its own block every week

Timed papers in the exact shape of the real one

Who it suits, and who it does not

It suits

It also suits

It does not suit

Monthly fees, the same for every course we teach

Rated 4.9 across 547 Google reviews

The other olympiad, the harder contests, and the courses underneath

About SOF ICSO and the preparation batch

Is NCO the same as ICSO?

Can I register my child for SOF ICSO directly?

Which classes can sit SOF ICSO?

What are the SOF ICSO dates for 2026?

What is actually in the paper?

Does the AI, Robotics and IT section need coding?

Do you use SOF's past papers in class?

Is there a second level for ICSO?

My child already does coding with you. Do they need this batch?

What happens after I send the form?

The free demo is a real section class

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