There is no end-of-February deadline for updating OASIS, and there has not been one since 2022. That date is republished every year by blogs and news sites as though it were a standing rule. It came from a single circular, for a single year, and was never reissued.
The current instruction is Circular No. 03/2024, dated 23 January 2024, and what it actually says is relative, not dated: “it is hereby requested to update Online Affiliated School Information System (OASIS) data before the beginning of next academic session.”
No date. No window. The duty is continuous, and the honest answer to “when is the OASIS deadline” is that there isn’t one — but there are two moments when stale data will hurt you, and both are further down this page.
Where the February myth came from
Circular No. 02/2022, dated 22 February 2022, asked schools to update “by end of February, 2022”. That is the whole origin. It was an instruction for that year, signed by a Chairman who has since left the post, and no subsequent circular repeats it.
We checked whether anything replaced it, in four places:
- The SARAS circular listings for session 2025 — 01/2025 to 18/2025, zero mentions of OASIS
- Session 2026 — 01/2026 to 10/2026, latest dated 24 July 2026, zero mentions
- The CBSE Academics index — Acad-01/2026 through Acad-57/2026, zero mentions
- The SARAS Manual’s own circular index, which still points at 03/2024
So 03/2024 remains the operative instruction as of 29 August 2026. If you have been treating end-of-February as a compliance date, you have been working to a deadline that expired four years ago.
The portal moved, and nobody was told
This is why your office staff periodically report that “OASIS is down”.
OASIS now lives at saras.cbse.gov.in/oasis, titled “OASIS 7.0 CBSE”, with login by User ID, password, OTP and captcha. The old address on cbseit.in returns HTTP 503. On the same day we checked, other services on cbseit.in returned 200 — so it is a moved service, not a site outage.
We found no circular announcing the migration. Schools may simply never have been told in writing. You will also see the system labelled OASIS, OASIS 5.0, OASIS R-5.0 and OASIS 7.0 across CBSE’s own pages, including a Pariksha Sangam tile reading “OASIS R-5.0 — School Profile Updations”. Every route resolves to the same system. Do not read anything into the version numbers.
The one standing OASIS duty nobody mentions
If you take one thing from this page, take this. It is current, undated, and appears on no other page we could find.
Class sizes are capped at 40 under clause 4.8 of the Affiliation Bye-Laws. Circular No. 11/2025, dated 21 July 2025, allows a school in exceptional circumstances to go up to 45 — for classes I to XII, not only X and XII as an older 2023 circular said. And “No school shall admit students over and above 45 students per sections, under any circumstances.”
The part that is an OASIS obligation, verbatim from clause (iv):
“The school shall also record the reasons of exceptional circumstances for granting admission beyond the prescribed limit of 40 and up to a maximum limit of 45 students for all classes wherever applicable in the OASIS Portal.”
So if any section in your school has more than 40 children, the reason has to be recorded in OASIS. For classes IX to XII the reasons also go in at registration; for classes I to VIII they go in the Admission & Withdrawal Register. There is also a classroom condition — not less than 500 sq ft, plus one square metre of built-up floor area per child.
Note the correction embedded here: if you are working from the July 2023 instructions, you may believe 45 applies only to direct admissions in classes X and XII. That wording has been superseded three times, most recently by 11/2025.
Two things you cannot change in OASIS
Land area and section counts are locked. Circular CBSE/CE/PS/Coord/2023, dated 24 July 2023, is explicit: to increase sections you go to the SARAS portal, and if the land area in OASIS is wrong you apply there for a correction. Only afterwards “may [schools] proceed to update the relevant columns in OASIS”.
That routing costs money, and the wording matters:
- ₹75,000 for an increase or decrease in land area
- ₹10,000 for a correction — where correction means “if there is any wrong entry/typographical error in the OASIS data and there is no change in the land documents”
That trailing condition is the whole test, and it is worth ₹65,000. If your land documents changed, it is not a correction.
Government and Foreign category schools are exempt and may update sections directly in OASIS, per the SARAS Manual, subject to the guidelines in Circular 13/2025.
One change worth knowing if you are planning sections: per CBSE’s press release of 26 February 2026, summarising Notification 06/2026, the maximum number of sections is now calculated on total built-up area — scaled down to 400 sq. mtrs, giving three sections for every 400 sq. mtrs thereafter.
OASIS is step 1 of every SARAS application
This is the first of the two moments when stale data actually costs you something. The SARAS information page puts it plainly:
“All existing schools must ensure that their OASIS data is updated as on date. If you have not updated your OASIS data please do it before proceeding for application.”
The Manual’s process flow for existing schools starts the same way: update OASIS and SQAAF, then Part A, then mandatory documents, then Parts B and C auto-populate, then payment.
Applications for affiliation session 2027-28 close on 30 September 2026. If you are filing an extension or any other category, read the SARAS guide — and get OASIS current first.
For fresh affiliation and switch-over the order reverses: OASIS and SQAAF come at Part C, within 21 days of the grant status update. The Manual contradicts itself on exactly where Part C sits in the sequence, so we will not assert an order — plan for the earlier one.
A free win most schools miss
Adding a non-science subject at Senior Secondary costs nothing and needs no application. Verbatim from CBSE’s landing page for existing schools:
“The school can offer any subject except physics, chemistry, biology and NCC to their students simply after updating in OASIS. The school has to apply for Additional Subjects of physics, chemistry, biology and NCC only, if not already granted to the school previously.”
The fee schedule confirms it: non-science additional subjects are NIL, with the note that schools should update the subjects in the OASIS portal. A science subject is ₹10,000 per subject and needs an application. If someone has told you every new subject requires a SARAS filing and a fee, that is wrong for most subjects.
“R3” is a language, not a return
Schools see “R3” alongside OASIS and assume it is some third annual return. It is the third language under the three-language scheme.
Circular Acad-17/2026, dated 9 April 2026: “Schools are required to finalise and notify their respective Regional Offices of their chosen R3 language(s), and also update the same in the OASIS.” A follow-up circular set an OASIS deadline of 31 May 2026, which has passed.
A later circular in July 2026 restates the three-language scheme but contains no mention of OASIS at all and rescinds neither of the earlier two. So the OASIS duty stands; the deadline attached to it is behind us. If your R3 language is not in OASIS, put it in.
What actually happens if OASIS is stale
Here is where we are going to disappoint anyone looking for a scary number, and say so deliberately.
A lot of pages claim stale OASIS data can suspend your students’ board registration rights. We could not find a single primary source for that. The nearest real provision — a ₹50,000 penalty and possible debarment from Registration and LOC for classes IX to XII — attaches to failing post-grant compliance on an affiliation condition, not to stale OASIS data. We are not going to repeat a threat we cannot source.
What is documented is narrower and sharper, and it concerns class XI and XII teacher records. A February 2026 circular on teacher data for on-screen marking says non-compliance “will invite strict action: 1. Any deviation will be treated as an attempt to vitiate the evaluation process. 2. The results of the school will not be declared. 3. Further action will be taken under the Examination/Affiliation Bye-Laws of the Board.”
The mechanism is mundane and worth understanding, because it is the second moment stale data costs you: “The log-in credentials and OTP will be shared on the e-mail ID & mobile nos. of the teachers”. A teacher whose phone number in OASIS is three years old cannot be reached, cannot log in, and cannot evaluate. That deadline has passed, but the pattern repeats every year.
We found no published instance of a penalty being levied on a school specifically for stale OASIS data. If anyone tells you otherwise, ask them for the circular number.
OASIS is not the Mandatory Public Disclosure
These get conflated constantly, usually because a news item mentions both in one paragraph. They are different obligations in different places:
- OASIS is CBSE’s own database. You log in and update it. No dated deadline.
- The Mandatory Public Disclosure goes on your school’s own website, in the Appendix IX format. Its format was revised in January 2026 with a deadline of 15 February 2026 — we cover the revised format field by field.
They do belong on the same to-do list, though. CBSE’s own 2026 circular groups clauses 2.3.8, 2.4.9, 14.5 and 5.4 together, so treating them as one afternoon’s work is reasonable.
What we deliberately have not told you
- No field-by-field list of what OASIS asks for. The only grouping in a primary source is the 2017 circular’s five headings — basic, faculty, student, academic and infrastructural. Every detailed field list circulating online is unverified, and OASIS has demonstrably gained fields since.
- No claim that CBSE opens and closes an annual editing window. The 2017 circular did set one. Nothing since says the practice continues. Log in and look.
- No helpdesk email. The address that circulates could not be confirmed on any cbse.gov.in or saras.cbse.gov.in page.
- We do not print “Online Academic and Administrative System” as the expansion. It appears in no primary CBSE document. Every circular from 2017, 2022 and 2024 says Online Affiliated School Information System.
- The circulars are addressed to “All Heads & Managers of the CBSE Affiliated Schools”. Their distribution lists do not name foreign or international category schools, so we make no claim about those.