Last verified: 11 November 2026. Exam timings, marks, section-wise questions and the no-negative-marking rule below are ✅ CONFIRMED from the NTA AISSEE 2027 Information Bulletin (public notice dated 3 November 2026). The minute-by-minute splits are our suggested editorial plan — a starting point to practise and adjust, not an official NTA instruction.
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Here’s the thing most families get wrong about AISSEE preparation: they practise questions, but they never practise time. Then on 31 January, a bright child spends 40 minutes wrestling with five hard Maths questions, rushes through the Language section, and discovers with fifteen minutes left that the GK section — twenty-five easy marks — is still untouched.
Both papers run on Sunday, 31 January 2027, from 2:00 PM — Class 6 until 4:30 PM, Class 9 until 5:00 PM. Both are offline pen-and-paper OMR tests, all multiple-choice, and there is no negative marking — a wrong answer costs exactly the same as a blank one, which is nothing. That last fact matters for the plan, because the final ten minutes should be spent guessing, not staring.
Class 6 — 150 minutes, 125 questions, 300 marks:
| Section | Questions | Marks | Marks per question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mathematics | 50 | 150 | 3 |
| Language (English/Hindi/regional) | 25 | 50 | 2 |
| Intelligence | 25 | 50 | 2 |
| General Knowledge | 25 | 50 | 2 |
Class 9 — 180 minutes, 150 questions, 400 marks:
| Section | Questions | Marks | Marks per question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mathematics | 50 | 200 | 4 |
| English | 25 | 50 | 2 |
| Intelligence | 25 | 50 | 2 |
| General Science | 25 | 50 | 2 |
| Social Science | 25 | 50 | 2 |
One more rule worth knowing: the qualifying bar is 25% in each section and 40% overall (not applicable to SC/ST candidates, as per the 2026 bulletin). So a child cannot afford to abandon a whole section — even the weakest one needs its quarter of the marks. The plan below protects that: every section gets its own block, and no block is ever sacrificed to save another.
Work in this order — strongest section first to build confidence, Maths while the mind is still fresh, GK last because it is the fastest to finish.
| Block | What | Minutes | Clock time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Language — 25 questions | 20 | 2:00 – 2:20 |
| 2 | Intelligence — 25 questions | 25 | 2:20 – 2:45 |
| 3 | Mathematics — 50 questions | 65 | 2:45 – 3:50 |
| 4 | General Knowledge — 25 questions | 20 | 3:50 – 4:10 |
| 5 | Buffer — bubbling, re-check, guesses | 20 | 4:10 – 4:30 |
That is 65 minutes for Maths — about 78 seconds per question — because each Maths question is worth 3 marks, half as much again as any other question. Language and GK get 20 minutes each because they are mostly recall: a child either knows the answer or doesn’t, and staring longer rarely changes that. Intelligence gets 25 minutes because pattern questions eat time quietly.
The discipline that makes this work: when a block’s time is up, move on. Circle the question number in the question paper, bubble nothing yet, and come back in the buffer. A question that takes four minutes has already cost you two other questions.
Same logic, one extra section, and Maths is even heavier — 200 of 400 marks, 4 marks per question.
| Block | What | Minutes | Clock time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English — 25 questions | 20 | 2:00 – 2:20 |
| 2 | Intelligence — 25 questions | 25 | 2:20 – 2:45 |
| 3 | General Science — 25 questions | 30 | 2:45 – 3:15 |
| 4 | Social Science — 25 questions | 20 | 3:15 – 3:35 |
| 5 | Mathematics — 50 questions | 75 | 3:35 – 4:50 |
| 6 | Buffer — bubbling, re-check, guesses | 10 | 4:50 – 5:00 |
Notice the order: Maths goes last for Class 9, not in the middle. That is deliberate. Fifty Maths questions at 4 marks each need a long, unbroken block, and a child who starts with Maths risks spending the first hour on it and panicking through everything else. Doing the four lighter sections first banks 200 marks of confidence, and then Maths gets a clean 75-minute run. If your child is genuinely a Maths-first child, flip it: Maths first, 75 minutes, then the rest. The split matters more than the order. Pick one order in the next mock and stick to it.
That final block — 20 minutes for Class 6, 10 for Class 9 — is the most important part of the plan, and the easiest to lose. It has three jobs, in this order:
A plan read once is forgotten by exam day. A plan practised three times becomes a habit. Two drills, both free, both doable this week:
Drill 1 — the section sprint. Pick one section, say Class 6 Maths, and solve 25 questions in 32 minutes with a stopwatch. Most children discover they spend the first ten minutes too slowly and the last ten in a panic. The sprint fixes the rhythm.
Drill 2 — the full mock at 2 PM. Take a full paper at the real exam time, with the split written at the top of the question paper and a watch on the desk. Afterwards, don’t just check the score — check the clock: which section overran, and by how much? Adjust the split once, then freeze it. Our mock test calendar shows how to space these mocks across the final 80 days.
Every child has one mock where a section explodes — a Maths set that refuses to yield, a GK section full of questions they have never seen. The rule for that day is simple: never steal from the buffer, and never steal from another section. Skip the hard questions, circle them, finish the paper, and use the buffer to come back.
Time is the one thing the exam gives every child in exactly equal measure. The children who do well are rarely the ones who know the most — they are the ones who spent their minutes where the marks are.
How much time does Class 6 get in AISSEE 2027?
150 minutes, from 2:00 PM to 4:30 PM on Sunday, 31 January 2027, for a paper of 125 questions worth 300 marks. That works out to about 72 seconds per question on average — but the sections should not get equal time, because Maths alone is worth half the marks.
How much time does Class 9 get in AISSEE 2027?
180 minutes, from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM on 31 January 2027, for a paper of 150 questions worth 400 marks. Maths is worth 200 of those 400 marks, so it deserves the biggest block of time in the plan above.
Should my child attempt the sections in the printed order?
Not necessarily. The paper does not force an order, so the child should start with the section they are most confident in, build momentum, and leave their weakest section — usually Maths — for a block where they are still fresh. The plan in this article shows one such order.
How much buffer time should a child keep in AISSEE 2027?
Keep 15 to 20 minutes unassigned at the end. That buffer is for bubbling any answers left marked in the question paper, re-checking the OMR sheet, and making sure no question was skipped by mistake. Never plan to use the full 150 or 180 minutes on solving.
Is there negative marking in AISSEE 2027?
No. Wrong answers and blank answers both score zero, so the child should attempt every single question — including guesses in the last ten minutes — rather than leave anything blank.
How can my child practise this time plan before the exam?
Take full mocks at the real exam time, 2:00 PM, with a watch on the desk and the section split written on the question paper. After three timed mocks the split becomes a habit, and the child stops needing to check the clock every five minutes.
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