English Chess Forum

I have an old SCCU grading list, 1976. Lots of players have their club affiliation listed as a secondary school.
I know that the Sunday Times National Schools Tournament was graded. Were other schools matches graded in the past? I played in the Berkshire Schools league but don't know if it was graded.

Neill Cooper wrote:I have an old SCCU grading list, 1976. Lots of players have their club affiliation listed as a secondary school.
I know that the Sunday Times National Schools Tournament was graded. Were other schools matches graded in the past? I played in the Berkshire Schools league but don't know if it was graded.

I played in the Tunbridge Wells Schools League, the Kent Schools League and the Hastings Schools League at that time and I'm pretty sure all were graded.

Of course, grading for juniors used to be free - it is only in recent years, when Mike Basman's UK Chess Challenge started attracting 1000s of youngsters, who would have liked to have had these games graded, that the BCF started charging for grading. More or less as a defensive measure as the system could have been flooded by the numbers involved in that one tournament.

Until the BCF started charging for junior grading, I used to send in results of the Northumbria Megafinal for grading. The Northumbria JCA still gets all its own tournaments graded - and the parents willingly pay ECF Silver membership.

Ian Thompson wrote:I played in the Tunbridge Wells Schools League, the Kent Schools League and the Hastings Schools League at that time and I'm pretty sure all were graded.

Thanks Ian. I had not realised there were separate leagues for towns. In Berks there was just an East and West Division and the winners met in the final. Did you play many matches in the 'town' leagues, or was in mainly in the county league?

Paul Bielby wrote:Of course, grading for juniors used to be free - it is only in recent years, when Mike Basman's UK Chess Challenge started attracting 1000s of youngsters, who would have liked to have had these games graded, that the BCF started charging for grading. More or less as a defensive measure as the system could have been flooded by the numbers involved in that one tournament.

Until the BCF started charging for junior grading, I used to send in results of the Northumbria Megafinal for grading. The Northumbria JCA still gets all its own tournaments graded - and the parents willingly pay ECF Silver membership.

Thanks for the feedback Paul. I had not realised that the introduction of junior grading fees was due to UK Chess Challenge. However, my focus is on inter-school secondary school games. Did RGS used to play in a Newcastle or Northumbria (and Durham) secondary school league? If so, was it graded?

Neill Cooper wrote:Thanks Ian. I had not realised there were separate leagues for towns. In Berks there was just an East and West Division and the winners met in the final. Did you play many matches in the 'town' leagues, or was in mainly in the county league?

I can't give you a definite list of schools, but the leagues included:

Tunbridge Wells Schools League:
Skinners' (Tunbridge Wells)
Tunbridge Wells Technical High School
Cranbrook
Beacon School (Crowborough)
Judd School (Tonbridge)
Huntleys School (Tunbridge Wells)
Ridgeway (Tunbridge Wells)

Hastings Schools League:
Skinners' (Tunbridge Wells)
Hastings Grammar School
Grove School (Hastings)
Eastbourne Grammar School

For number of matches, there were most in the Tunbridge Wells Schools League, then the Kent Schools League, then the Hastings Schools League, but none of them involved very many games so there isn't really much to choose between them.

When the BCF introduced a charge for junior grading I challenged the then President, Gerry Walsh, on the subject. He explained that he felt the UKCC was a threat to the grading system (You can see why; 70000 new and hitherto ungraded youngsters suddenly appearing) and this was why the charge.

When I taught in Sunderland back in the 70s there were both Secondary and Primary Leagues (which I ran in the back of my diary!). They were not graded. Then came the Thatcher government and Sir Keith Joseph as (anti-?)Education minister. The teachers unions, in this area at least, banned out-of-school activities. The leagues never recovered - I organised my own secondary school team to play in the adult Durham County League and this was when the kids started getting gradings. When the Northumbria JCA was founded in the early '90s, I arranged for the children to be graded in all our events. When the grading charge came in the Parents were asked if they wished us to continue with
grading. They did and since then the NJCA has practiced 100% membership of both B and ECF. I still think the junior tournaments should allow BRONZE membership, but at our most recent AGM the parents seemed happy to pay for SILVER. Since the only graded junior events in this area are tournaments there is little point in the existence of BRONZE membership.

Ian Thompson wrote:For number of matches, there were most in the Tunbridge Wells Schools League, then the Kent Schools League, then the Hastings Schools League, but none of them involved very many games so there isn't really much to choose between them.

Thanks for the information Ian.

Paul Bielby wrote:When the BCF introduced a charge for junior grading I challenged the then President, Gerry Walsh, on the subject. He explained that he felt the UKCC was a threat to the grading system (You can see why; 70000 new and hitherto ungraded youngsters suddenly appearing) and this was why the charge.

Sounds like jumping the gun to me - the vast majority of the 70000 were not playing with clocks and were never going to.

Paul Bielby wrote:... I still think the junior tournaments should allow BRONZE membership

Agreed. One day junior tournaments is the entry point for most juniors into the grading system, so it should be the bottom level.

I have an old SCCU grading list, 1976. Lots of players have their club affiliation listed as a secondary school.
I know that the Sunday Times National Schools Tournament was graded. Were other schools matches graded in the past? I played in the Berkshire Schools league but don't know if it was graded.

Neill, I played in the Berkshire Schools League from 1974 until 1978, and as far as I remember the games were not graded. I seem to remember checking with a club member who was a local grader at the time. Certainly I never got a grade until 1977 when I had started playing league chess as well. It might just be that I played too few games, however.

Schools chess was certainly not graded when I was playing it in the late 70s/early 80s. A few schools had teams in the local (adult) league, however.

Neill Cooper wrote:I have an old SCCU grading list, 1976. Lots of players have their club affiliation listed as a secondary school.

That could have related to Congress participation as well. If a school had a chess club and many did, if you entered a Congress and weren't a member of an adult club, the school could be named. It wasn't that unusual for a school team to play as itself in a local league or for Juniors to play county chess without being adult club members. Looking through an even older SCCU list for 1970, many of the affiliations named are schools, universities or employment. In other words affinity teams were as important as local club teams.