"SavetheUKCC" petition

[Matt Mackenzie]

I realise that many (of the more mature) adults see juniors as noisy and disruptive (which is simply not true). However, the more mature gentlemen are more concerned with the prospect of losing to an 11 year old who hasn't yet been afflicted with "London System syndrome": Let's have a nice game of chess in which some pieces get moved around, exchanged and no taxing calculation or endgames happen and we can agree a lovely draw.

Have to say, I don't see many games like that at my (mostly fairly elderly) club

[Andrew Zigmond]

It's still what I'm hearing.
The top of the pyramid is what matters. The bottom is merely there for support.

I think the point is that those players at the top of the pyramid will, not unreasonably, focus on that. Titled players will want to devote their resources to bringing along the next generation of titled players. Obviously every titled player had to start somewhere but if club players want a new generation of club level players then they are the people who have to make it happen.

Richard James is correct when he talks about the academic pressure secondary school children face today. That is the main obstacle we have when trying to attract teenagers to the game. The Yorkshire League is played on Saturdays without there being an exceptionally high junior take up.

[John Upham]

I'm sure we've all faced juniors who have offered repeated draws in lost positions, although to be fair perhaps they were unaware they were lost.

I'm sure that this behaviour is not limited to juniors.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"I realise that many (of the more mature) adults see juniors as noisy and disruptive (which is simply not true)."

"Simply not true" is a stretch - "frequently not true", I can accept.

There was a "mature" (in the "old" sense) adult last time I was at a Surrey club getting very cross at people being noisy, but he made just as much noise trying to shut them up!

[Alex Holowczak]

At Watford, we're trying an experiment. It's been difficult to persuade the club juniors (with a few exceptions) to participate in inter-club league matches (which invariably occur Mondays to Thursdays, rather than Fridays) because late nights don't mix too well with school next morning. However, we've this season been able to agree with the Hertford & District League a match programme whereby all eight Watford fixtures take place either during half-term (and here we've had to take advantage of the fact that the independent schools tend to have longer half-terms than the others) or school holidays.

That looks workable for a league with eight matches, being more or less one match each relevant week, but we've yet to work out whether next season we can work something out with the bigger Hertfordshire League where teams typically have 12 or possibly even 14 fixtures over the year. Even the H&DL experiment is a work in progress, and it's possible we may have to get some adult club members to help out, but it suggests that - if one is prepared to be creative - possibilities exist.

Now that's an interesting idea...

[Richard James]

At Watford, we're trying an experiment. It's been difficult to persuade the club juniors (with a few exceptions) to participate in inter-club league matches (which invariably occur Mondays to Thursdays, rather than Fridays) because late nights don't mix too well with school next morning. However, we've this season been able to agree with the Hertford & District League a match programme whereby all eight Watford fixtures take place either during half-term (and here we've had to take advantage of the fact that the independent schools tend to have longer half-terms than the others) or school holidays.

That looks workable for a league with eight matches, being more or less one match each relevant week, but we've yet to work out whether next season we can work something out with the bigger Hertfordshire League where teams typically have 12 or possibly even 14 fixtures over the year. Even the H&DL experiment is a work in progress, and it's possible we may have to get some adult club members to help out, but it suggests that - if one is prepared to be creative - possibilities exist.

Now that's an interesting idea...

Ealing Juniors do very much the same thing in the Thames Valley League now - although it's not easy as there are 14 matches per team to be completed.

When we were running Richmond Junior teams in the Thames Valley league between 1992 and 2002 (one year we finished 2nd above Richmond A) we played our home matches on Fridays, which wasn't popular with many of the other teams. We also tried to play as many away matches as we could during the school holidays. I played for our first team myself and parents were sometimes available to play in away matches to make up the numbers. It eventually became too difficult, though, because of increasing academic pressures.

[NickFaulks]

It eventually became too difficult, though, because of increasing academic pressures.

I'm sure that's true, but this constant refrain drives me mad. When I was at school, at what would nowadays be considered a "crammer", I'm sure we worked quite hard, but certainly not to the point of excluding chess matches or other after-school activities.

Did we leave school less well educated than today's academically pressurised crop? I seriously doubt that.

[PeterFarr]

It eventually became too difficult, though, because of increasing academic pressures.

I'm sure that's true, but this constant refrain drives me mad. When I was at school, at what would nowadays be considered a "crammer", I'm sure we worked quite hard, but certainly not to the point of excluding chess matches or other after-school activities.

Did we leave school less well educated than today's academically pressurised crop? I seriously doubt that.

The pressure is real enough; whether to good effect is another thing entirely.

[Richard James]

It eventually became too difficult, though, because of increasing academic pressures.

I'm sure that's true, but this constant refrain drives me mad. When I was at school, at what would nowadays be considered a "crammer", I'm sure we worked quite hard, but certainly not to the point of excluding chess matches or other after-school activities.

Did we leave school less well educated than today's academically pressurised crop? I seriously doubt that.

Probably not - but that's a different (though not entirely unrelated) topic. In our day we'd take a couple of weeks off chess before O Levels or A Levels rather than taking a year off as they do now.

In my area a lot of children drop out of primary school chess clubs (and also Richmond Junior Club) at the beginning of Yr6, or even Yr5, because they're spending several evenings a week having extra tuition to help them get into the selective secondary school of their choice. The exception, interestingly, seems to be Catholic primary schools, where many parents are more interested in their children going to Faith schools than top academic schools.

It seems that children have a lot more homework than we did, are under a lot more pressure than we were, and, perhaps as a result, we're seeing a disturbing increase in the number of young people with mental health issues. But if you compare, say, the 11+ exams we took with the KS2 tests today, or O Level papers with GCSE papers, our exams seem a lot harder.

[NickFaulks]

I sometimes wonder whether all the homework and pressure is not so much a part of proper education as an alternative to it.

[PeterFarr]

I sometimes wonder whether all the homework and pressure is not so much a part of proper education as an alternative to it.

That's what my two teenagers seem to think - though I guess they are biased.

[Kevin Thurlow]

The difference is that in my day homework did get marked but did not count towards your overall exam score. Now, homework (assuming it's marked)counts towards the final exam mark, so it is difficult to have an evening off from it. The Government has now realised after some years that if you rely on homework for exam scores that some people cheat, so maybe there will be less of that in future.

Another difference is that you had to go out for entertainment 40-50 years ago, now you don't. I don't like online chess (except for CC), but lots of people do. This will stop people of any age joining clubs or playing in tournaments.

Chess is not perceived as "cool" either, which deters some juniors.

[Alex Holowczak]

There's a difference between homework and coursework.

Routine homework is marked but isn't counted towards your exam scores; it is used as part of continuous assessment so that the teacher can spend hours working out what you know, what you don't know, and can use that information to inform future lesson planning.

Coursework is usually a more substantial piece of work. For example, with English, you'd have to write various essays on different types of books, one of which is a Shakespeare play, and the top few pieces would go off as coursework. With languages, you'd have to write on certain topics. With science, it'd be coming up with an experiment, performing it, and doing the write up. With maths, it was some sort of uninteresting puzzle that you could take further, or data analysis. With IT you had to do some database work or some basic programming. And you have several of these in Year 10 and 11 for each subject, and can be very time consuming. And you do this for every subject you choose at GCSE, usually 12. And routine homework continues alongside.

[John Upham]

With maths, it was some sort of uninteresting puzzle that you could take further, or data analysis.

Do you examples of uninteresting puzzles that you might have been given or that you are aware of as being uninteresting?

[John Hickman]

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