About ICSE
The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education popularly known as ICSE Board is an examination conducted by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE), a private board of school education in India for Class 10. The CISCE board is headquartered in New Delhi. It is considered as one of the popular boards of education in India who conducts the ICSE Class 10 and ISC Class 12 board examinations every year.
The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education has been designed to provide an exam in the course of general education, according to the New Education Policy 1986, through English medium. The ICSE Board focuses on a student’s overall growth, providing a balanced curriculum to all its learners. Students can also find all the information related to the ICSE Board in their ICSE official website.
ICSE Board Details
CISCE aims to serve its learners through quality education and empowering them to contribute towards humanity, pluralistic society, by creating an exciting learning experience. The contact details of the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations are given below.
| Name of Board | Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) |
| Established | 1958 |
| Medium of Instruction | English |
| Address (Head Office) | Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) P 35-36, Sector VI Pushp Vihar, Saket New Delhi – 110017 |
| Telephone Number | (011) 29564831/33/37 |
| [email protected] | |
| Official Website | cisce.org |
| Fax Number | (011) 29564735 |
ICSE Syllabus
The ICSE syllabus is well-structured, comprehensive and aims to build analytical skills and practical knowledge to its students. ICSE Board is known for its vast syllabus, and students must give importance to all the subjects. The board focuses on a detailed study of each subject which helps students to have the flexibility of selecting specific subjects in higher classes.
The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education also considers the internal assessments to be very important for a student’s development. The practical exam results are aggregated with the student’s overall score. Students who are studying under the ICSE Board should be completely familiar with the exam syllabus to prepare effectively for their examination.
The board has reduced the ICSE Syllabus for classes 6 to 12 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools remained closed for a longer time, the reduction in the syllabus has helped students to cover the syllabus by themselves. It also reduced student’s stress and burden of studies. They can get the revised Syllabus of ICSE board for all classes by visiting the links below.
ICSE Practical Syllabus
The practical syllabus of ICSE board will help students get an idea about the types of experiments they need to perform for Physics, Chemistry, and Biology in their respective school lab. The experiments mentioned in the syllabus are framed according to the theory syllabus so that students can understand its importance. Before performing the experiment students should have a thorough understanding of the theoretical concepts. Click the link given below to download the latest ICSE practical syllabus.
ICSE Affiliations
Below, we have provided the steps and Guidelines through which a school can get affiliated to ICSE Board.
Guidelines for affiliations:
- The school must obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the state government for affiliation of the school to the council.
- The school should be run by a registered society, trust or company registered under Section 25 (1)(a) of the Companies Act, 1956 and one of the principal purposes of the society, trust or company must be educational.
- Each school must have a duly constituted governing body and managing committee.
- The society, trust or company must be financially stable.
- The medium of instruction in the school must be English, and the scheme of studies must be in accordance with the scheme laid down by the council for secondary and higher secondary stages.
- The staff must be qualified and trained in accordance with the qualifications prescribed by the council.
- There should be a compulsory provident fund scheme.
- The school infrastructure should be adequate for accommodating the numbers and gender of pupils attending the school.
- The playing fields and/or other facilities for extra-curricular and co-curricular activities must be adequate.
- The equipment should be adequate to enable all subjects to be taught efficiently and must include apparatus for practical work.
- The number of working days and hours should conform to those prescribed by the council from time to time.
- The Certificate of Land is a mandatory document to be submitted electronically in a prescribed format for provisional affiliation.
ICSE Curriculum Details
The detailed curriculum of the ICSE board from class 1 to class 10 is provided below.
- Class 1 to 5
The ICSE Board focuses more on refining the skills of students. All the schools under the CISCE have the freedom to select their textbooks for class 1 to 5. The board has guidelines for every subject which the schools must follow to make the syllabus relevant to the students studying under ICSE board.
- Class 6 to 10
No prescribed syllabus but only guidelines are provided for students of class 6, 7 and 8. For class 9 and 10, a well-structured syllabus is provided by the council. The council also provides a list of books from which the schools can choose for their students. There is no textbook set by the council.
Moreover, from 2021, new subjects will be included in the curriculum. Group I history, civics and geography (Thailand) will be offered to aspirants of Thai nationality compulsorily while others can also opt for the same. The students will have a choice to study either history civics and geography or history civics and geography (Thailand).
ICSE Class 10 Board Exam
The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations conducts the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) exam for Class 10 students.
- ICSE Class 10 Board Exam
The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) has been designed to provide an exam in the course of general education, according to the New Education policy 1986. The ICSE Class 10 Board exam is conducted for Class 10 students. There are 7 subjects in the examination, out of which 4 are compulsory subjects, and 3 have a choice of subjects. The ICSE Board conducts all school-level ICSE Board exams for subjects like English, History, Commercial Studies, Science, Environmental Science, etc.
ICSE Compartmental Exams
After the conduction of the ICSE board examination, the results are declared a few months later. Last year the ICSE Board exams were started on 27th February 2020. Once the results are out the ICSE board releases the time-table for ICSE compartmental exam.
ICSE compartmental exams for class 10 were conducted on 6th, and 7th Oct 2020 and the results were declared on 17th October 2020 at 3:00 pm. Students who fail to secure pass certificates are permitted to appear for the compartmental examination in one subject in which they have not secured the pass mark. However, the students should have secured the pass mark in English (compulsory) and three other subjects in the ICSE examination. The entries of all the students are submitted online to the Council by the Head of the concerned school.
ICSE Practical Exams
Practical exams are also an important part of the syllabus like theory paper. Practical help students to clear all the concepts and doubts related to the topic. Along with the theory part scoring well in practical exams is also necessary to score well in that subject. Practical work promotes experimental learning. ICSE conducts practical exams for subjects such as Art, Physics, Indian Music, Home Science, Chemistry, Biology, Biotechnology, Computer Science and Fashion Designing.
ICSE Study Materials
Students who are studying under ICSE Board must prepare hard for their examination. Visit ICSE Study Materials to get the latest question papers, previous year papers and sample papers of ICSE Board exam. These study materials will help students to prepare effectively for the upcoming board exam.
ICSE Sample Papers
ICSE Sample Papers will help students to build a strong foundation for solving the problem in their board exams. These ICSE Sample Papers are prepared as per the latest ICSE syllabus and considered as the important study material while preparing for their board exam. The ICSE Board class-wise sample papers are provided in the table below.
ICSE Previous Year Question Papers
ICSE Previous Year Question Papers are based on the current and updated curriculum by ICSE Board. By referring more and more ICSE Previous Years Question Papers, students become perfect in the question paper pattern for a particular class and subject, learn about the possibility of repeating questions. Also, it helps in reducing the student’s nervousness while answering their question paper in ICSE Board exam.
ICSE Important Questions
ICSE Important Questions give students an idea of the portions they should not miss. Hence, solving them will help cover the types of important question or essential topics from the ICSE syllabus that are likely to appear for the ICSE Board examination. So, solving these critical questions is an unavoidable task for the students. The class-wise ICSE Important Questions are mentioned below.
| ICSE Class 6 Important Questions |
| ICSE Class 7 Important Questions |
| ICSE Class 8 Important Questions |
| ICSE Class 9 Important Questions |
| ICSE Class 10 Important Questions |
ICSE Textbook Solutions
ICSE board does not prescribe any specific textbook to the student. Most students of ICSE board study through various reference books.
Concise Selina Solutions
The book by the Selina publisher is the most sought out books by ICSE students. This book contains several questions from each chapter with varying difficulty levels. Here we have provided the Selina Solutions for Class 8, 9 and 10. Students can access the chapter-wise ICSE Textbook Solutions from the table below.
ML Aggarwal Solutions
The books published by ML Aggarwal is one of the best reference books of Mathematics, designed for the students studying in ICSE board. These ML Aggarwal Solutions contains detailed answers for the questions present n the bookICSE BooksThe ICSE syllabus includes some of the most important topics that form the basic foundations. So, it is very important to be well-equipped with all the ICSE Books and have a proper understanding of the concepts. Students can download ICSE books in PDF format, which helps them while preparing for the ICSE Board exam.
ICSE Exam Pattern
The ICSE exam pattern for all the compulsory subjects provided below so that students can overview of the exact question paper pattern, weightage of marks for each section and number of questions in each section. By knowing the exam pattern, they get to know the important topics which need to be focused more. Students should go through the exam pattern before they start preparing for the ICSE Class 10 Board exam.
| ICSE Exam Pattern English I (2 hours) |
| There will be 4 broad questions. A composition of 450 to 500 words, second is a letter, third is an unseen passage and related questions and fourth would be a question to test students’ grammar. In essay and letter section, students are given a choice. They should choose only those topics which they know thoroughly. |
| ICSE Exam Pattern English – II Exam Pattern (2 Hours) |
| Section – A (2 questions ) |
| Section – B (2 questions ) |
| Section – C (2 questions ) contains an essay type question |
| ICSE Exam Pattern For Maths (2 ½ hours) |
| Section – A ( 4 questions of 10 marks each = 40 marks) |
| Section – B ( 7 questions out of which 4 are to be solved for obtaining 40 marks) |
| ICSE Exam Pattern For Hindi (3 hours)- First section deals with the Hindi Language. |
| It has 3 major parts – i)Essay of around 250 words ii)Letter iii) Unseen passage |
| Second section deals with Hindi Literature in which students are supposed to answer any 4 questions from the two books they have read from. |
| ICSE Exam Pattern For Physics ( 1.5 hrs) |
| Section – A – Short compulsory questions worth 40 marks |
| Section – B – 6 questions out of which any 4 are to be solved worth 40 marks. |
| ICSE Exam Pattern For Chemistry (1.5 hrs) |
| Section – A – Short compulsory questions worth 40 marks |
| Section – B – 6 questions out of which any 4 are to be solved worth 40 marks. |
| ICSE Exam Pattern For Biology (1.5 hrs) |
| Section – A – Short compulsory questions worth 40 marks |
| Section – B – 6 questions out of which any 4 are to be solved worth 40 marks |
| ICSE Exam Pattern For History and Civics (2 hrs) |
| Section – A First part deals with small answer type ques from civics part(10 marks) |
| The second part deals with small answer type ques from history part (20 marks) |
| Section – B First part has 3 long answer type questions from civics out of which any 2 are to be solved (20 marks) |
| The second part has 5 long answer type questions from history out of which any 3 are to be solved (30 marks) |
| ICSE Exam Pattern For Geography (2 hrs) |
| First part has 2 questions – i) Map of India(10 marks) ii)Survey map and its interpretation(20 marks) |
| The second part has 9 questions out of which 5 are to be solved (50 marks) |
| ICSE Exam Pattern For. E.V.S (2 hrs) |
| The first part has 4 compulsory questions and the second part has 5 long answer type questions out of which any 4 are to be solved. |
ICSE Grading Pattern
The ICSE Board marking scheme is given below. Group 1 is compulsory, but students can select any 2 subjects from group 2 and any 1 subject from group 3.
| GROUP I: (Compulsory) | Percentage External Examination | Marks Internal Assessment |
| English | 80% | 20% |
| A Second Language (one/two) | 80% | 20% |
| History, Civics and Geography | 80% | 20% |
| GROUP II: (Any two/three of the following subjects) | ||
| Mathematics | 80% | 20% |
| Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) | 80% | 20% |
| Economics | 80% | 20% |
| Commercial Studies | 80% | 20% |
| A Modern Foreign Language | 80% | 20% |
| A Classical Language | 80% | 20% |
| Environmental Science | 80% | 20% |
| GROUP III: (Any one of the following subjects) | ||
| Computer Applications | 50% | 50% |
| Economic Applications | 50% | 50% |
| Commercial Applications | 50% | 50% |
| Art | 50% | 50% |
| Performing Arts | 50% | 50% |
| Home Science | 50% | 50% |
| Cookery | 50% | 50% |
| Fashion Designing | 50% | 50% |
| Physical Education | 50% | 50% |
| Yoga | 50% | 50% |
| Technical Drawing Applications | 50% | 50% |
| Environmental Applications | 50% | 50% |
| A Modern Foreign Language | 50% | 50% |
How to Prepare for ICSE
The preparation tips mentioned below will guide students on how to schedule their study plan effectively. It will give them some idea on how to begin the preparation according to the subject. Students are advised to go through these tips before they start their ICSE Board exam preparation so that they can work on it smoothly.
| ICSE 10 Preparation Tips |
| ICSE Class 10 Physics Preparation Tips |
| ICSE Class 10 Chemistry Preparation Tips |
| ICSE Class 10 Biology Preparation Tips |
| ICSE Class 10 Maths Preparation Tips |
ICSE Latest Updates
ICSE’s latest updates help students to be updated with the recent changes and notifications released by the ICSE board. Knowing the updates will help students to know all the changes initiated by the board and how it will benefit them. Given below the table of all the notifications issued by the ICSE board related to syllabus, compartmental exams, ICSE Board exam etc. The latest updates are taken from the ICSE official website so that students are updated with the latest changes implemented by the board.
Revised ICSE Time Table 2020 for Class 10
The Council has released the Indian Certificate for Secondary Education (ICSE) revised date sheet for the remaining Class 10 board exams on 22nd May 2020. The exams were started on 2nd July 2020 with Geography H.C.G (Paper 2) and ended on 12th July 2020 with Economics paper. Students were advised to plan their studies as per the revised schedule. It helped them to ace the exam with good marks.
ICSE Videos on Important Topics
To make learning easier and fun through interactive videos. Here we have provided the links of few videos. Go through them and enjoy learning.
Periodic Table
Understanding Carbon
Stay tuned with CoolGyan to get the latest notification on ICSE Exam along with syllabus, marking scheme, sample papers, previous year question papers and more.