ICSE Class 10 Computer Applications Syllabus, Units & Marks

Studying this subject? See the ICSE Class 10 Computer Applications course, or read the units below first.

What is the ICSE Class 10 Computer Applications syllabus?

ICSE Class 10 Computer Applications is organised into 8 units. The full unit list, the topics inside each one and the exam pattern are below, taken from the syllabus we teach to.

ICSE Class 10 Computer Applications unit list

What each unit covers

Unit 1: Revision of Class IX Syllabus

• Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming concepts
• Elementary concept of objects and classes
• Values and data types (primitive and non-primitive)
• Operators in Java and expressions
• Statements, scope and lifetime of variables
• Input in Java (Scanner class)
• Mathematical library methods (Math class)
• Conditional constructs (if, if-else, switch-case)
• Iterative constructs (for, while, do-while) and nested loops

Unit 2: Class as the Basis of All Computation

• Objects as instances of a class encapsulating state and behaviour
• Member variables (attributes) and member methods
• Class as a composite type and an object factory
• Primitive vs composite data types
• Differences between objects and classes

Unit 3: User-Defined Methods

• Need for and syntax of methods
• Method definition, declaration and method calling
• Method prototype, parameters and arguments
• Call by value and call by reference (actual vs formal parameters)
• Method overloading and polymorphism
• Static and non-static (instance) methods
• Pure and impure methods

Unit 4: Constructors

• Definition and characteristics of a constructor
• Default constructor
• Parameterised constructor
• Constructor overloading
• Difference between constructors and methods

Unit 5: Library Classes

• Wrapper classes for primitive data types
• Autoboxing and unboxing
• Methods to convert numeric and character data (parseInt, parseDouble, etc.)
• Character checking methods (isDigit, isLetter, isWhitespace, etc.)
• Case conversion methods (toUpperCase, toLowerCase)

Unit 6: Encapsulation

• Concept of encapsulation and data hiding
• Access specifiers: private, protected, public
• Scope of variables: class, instance, local and argument
• Visibility rules

Unit 7: Arrays

• Single-dimensional arrays: declaration, initialisation, accessing elements
• Double-dimensional arrays and matrix operations (row, column, diagonal sums)
• Sorting techniques: selection sort and bubble sort
• Searching techniques: linear search and binary search

Unit 8: String Handling

• String class and its methods (length, charAt, indexOf, substring, etc.)
• String comparison (equals, equalsIgnoreCase, compareTo)
• Case conversion and trimming (toLowerCase, toUpperCase, trim, replace)
• Character extraction and manipulation
• Concatenation and string-based programs (palindrome, reverse, etc.)

Exam pattern

Two components of 100 marks each. Theory: one written paper of 2 hours carrying 100 marks. Internal Assessment (practical): 100 marks, evaluated jointly by the subject teacher (50 marks) and a visiting external examiner (50 marks).

Practical and project work

Internal Assessment requires a minimum of 20 laboratory assignments completed during the year, covering class design, coding, documentation, execution and testing in BlueJ/Java. Evaluation criteria include class design (10), variable description (10), coding and documentation (10) and execution/output (20), with the subject teacher and external examiner each awarding 50 marks.

Reviewed by Kajal Ma'am (MCA), teaching CBSE Computer Science & Informatics Practices since 2006. Weightage per the official CBSE 2026-27 curriculum.