The National Schools Championship

[Roger de Coverly]

AND..... Offer a year's FREE ECF (Silver?) membership to all players in the teams reaching this stage who AREN'T already ECF members.

But do you repeat this every year? Does it apply to reserves not having previously appeared in the competition?

Free membership and no membership are logically equivalent, no membership is both cheaper and simpler. There's nothing other than ECF intransigence and a bit of constitutional change to make the School a member for the duration of their participation in the competition.

I'm not sure there's explicit confirmation, but it appears the ECF have followed a path of withdrawing the whole event from grading. Events withdrawing from grading was one of the predicted consequences of membership, even if in practice the lack of compulsion for adult events meant that relatively few did so.

[Alex McFarlane]

that somewhat removes the topic from the agenda as far as the elections are concerned.

Does it? Surely the way a Director will vote in this is important. It will be an indication of the direction future policy might be headed.

[David Sedgwick]

There are lots of candidates nominated by Phil Ehr ...

Two actually: Andrew Paulson as President and Claire Summerscale as Junior Director. A third if you count Mike Gunn as a member of the Governance Committee.

[Matthew Turner]

David,
Sorry, but lets add Phil himself and the two members of Phil's junior team standing for the non-exec posts. How many votes will the organisations that Sean represents decide to cast for those candidates?

[Jonathan Rogers]

He presumably understands the junior chess scene, so advised the board that the move to insist on Junior Membership was well founded?

Reading between the lines of the minutes and what's been said elsewhere, he proposed the exclusion of junior team events like the National Schools from compulsory ECF membership.

The four in support of compulsion appear to have been
The Acting Director of Membership and Marketing
The Home Director
The Non-Executive Director (there was only one at the time as the other had been co-opted as acting DoMM)
one other

The three against appear to have been
The Junior Director
two others

Only the previous autumn, the ECF had offered free entry to the National Schools. Charging £ 8 per head to take part would cut right across that.

I have just noticed that re: the parallel issue of ECF membership determining the outcome of the counties semi-final in June, the disastrous rule was made by one of the Directors who appears in Roger's first category, and the unsuccessful appeal by Kent against the application of the rule was heard by two or perhaps even all three of the other Directors who appear in Roger's first category. I daresay that the decision was inevitable in any event but it further supports my criticisms in CHESS.

[Richard Haddrell]

The ECF site for the U19 and Girls Team Championships indicates that games will not be graded hence avoiding the need for ECF membership.

It doesn’t, though you could be excused for thinking so. The reference is to Girls events only. In the Open U19 the intention is to grade everything from the Zone Finals onwards. In Austin Elliott’s terms that woud be “round of 32” I think. The number of teams involved could be anything from (about) 24 to 30, 32 at a pinch.

… Grade, and hence require Bronze ECF membership for, only for the LATER (post first large rounds) stages…

This kind of idea was put forward, but rejected by the people in charge of the event at the time. It seemed sensible to me. There was an attempt to understand what the key design criteria for the event were (such as should it be graded). It seemed that the junior community was unable to reach a consensus on that.

This is news to me. I suppose I’m sort of in the junior community, but I never heard of any such discussion at the time or since. I knew nothing of the Board proposal till after the decision was made. For what it’s worth I’m not sure I’d oppose Austin’s suggestion. Unfortunately it’s not the proposal on the agenda, and I oppose that strongly. As Neill has said, the competition is not only for élite teams. It also provides local leagues for much less experienced teams who may well have no other event to play in, and forcing them to take out ECF Membership sounds like a pretty good recipe for driving them away.

Richard Haddrell
Chief Conductor, ECF Open U19 Championship

[AustinElliott]

AND..... Offer a year's FREE ECF (Silver?) membership to all players in the teams reaching this stage who AREN'T already ECF members.

But do you repeat this every year? Does it apply to reserves not having previously appeared in the competition?

These are details that could hopefully be agreed if the PRINCIPLE were accepted, I'd say. You might want (for instance) to only allow someone to get two free annual memberships, or limit it to those who'd played in a certain no of rounds/matches. But the key thing would surely be to have a basic principle that could serve as a compromise everyone could sign up to. Then the parties have to thrash out the details.

Free membership and no membership are logically equivalent, no membership is both cheaper and simpler.

Not exactly - free membership actually gives people something with a value as a kind of mark of achievement, and also allows/encourages them to play more... "Now I'm a member, I could play for a junior club in a League /in a congress for reduced rate if I wanted'. Widening participation, and all that.

Also gets the games in the later stages graded, which is something members are said to value..

Re cost, free is CHEAPER, but you wouldn't think additional junior memberships would really cost that much...

To expand a bit, and somewhat by analogy with the scientific professional societies I belong to, I was assuming (treading carefully here) that only part of my £ 13 pa ECF Bronze Membership fee goes to pay for the ECF to administer my membership, including grading games. I presume some other part of the money also funds the 'permanent secretariat' and part of it funds 'other ECF chess activities' (international chess etc). Looked at that way, the actual incurred COST of an additional [non club junior] member could be said to only be the first of these. So I'd regard each free membership to 'non-committed' juniors as only really 'costing' that first part of the fee (real admin cost)... whilst hopefully (by attracting players and perhaps ECF adult members for the future) reaping much more later on if those people go on to become lifelong chess players.

[Roger de Coverly]

that only part of my £ 13 pa ECF Bronze Membership fee goes to pay for the ECF to administer my membership, including grading games.

Much of the money raised by the ECF goes to pay for its employed office which is needed to collect the money to pay for its office. It might depend on the relationship between number of players and number of organisations but general reasoning, if not ECF reasoning, suggests it should cost less to collect one bulk payment from an organisation than one hundred individual payments.

[Neill Cooper]

Re the schools competition, here's a compromise suggestion, from an adult chess player with long ago memories of the 70s Sunday Times school competition.

Even if this year's events aren't to be graded, perhaps there is a way to USE grading IN THE LATER ROUNDS ONLY as a lure for later ones...? (Read on)

Anyway, my suggestion would be

1. Have the event under ECF auspices (as in 'sort of sponsored by by not run by')

BUT:

2. Grade, and hence require Bronze ECF membership for, only for the LATER (post first large rounds) stages (round of 32? round of 16?) where a decent fraction of the players will likely already be club members and hence ECF members anyway.

(I'm thinking almost of the FA Cup with the stage where the League clubs join in, which is already the 3rd round)

AND..... Offer a year's FREE ECF (Silver?) membership to all players in the teams reaching this stage who AREN'T already ECF members.

Austin,
Thank you for the suggestions. (I have not included the whole post above purely for brevity, not as a comment on it.)
I think one problem with this approach is what happens in the second year, after the free membership has run out.
Also, a key factor that needs to be taken into account is that chess is predominantly run in secondary schools by teachers most of whom are not ECF chess players. Even at this year's National finals only 3 of the 8 teachers running the chess teams had played any graded chess in the last 10 years.
Thirdly, there are not a large number of teenage chess players. Those who play at school and club are even more limited. Looking at the latest grading list there are 136 Upper sixth (17 year old) players with a grade. Of these only 18 have played for school and club in the part year, and 11 of those played in the 'last 32' of the national schools tournament. As you say it would be good when someone has time to analyse all 200+ school pupils who played in the last 32.
Round the other way, there are early zone matches where there are 12 good players (all graded over 100) and it would be a shame if these games could not be graded.
One extra issue is that the event has been won in the past by Scottish and Irish Schools, how does insisting on ECF membership fit with the event being UK wide?

[Richard Haddrell]

… Grade, and hence require Bronze ECF membership for, only for the LATER (post first large rounds) stages…

I’m not sure I’d oppose Austin’s suggestion. Unfortunately it’s not the proposal on the agenda, and I oppose that strongly. As Neill has said, the competition is not only for élite teams. It also provides local leagues for much less experienced teams who may well have no other event to play in, and forcing them to take out ECF Membership sounds like a pretty good recipe for driving them away.

Richard Haddrell
Chief Conductor, ECF Open U19 Championship

I’ve just noticed my slip. I hope no one really thought I was opposed to the proposal on the agenda. What I oppose, though I made a mess of saying it, is the Board’s decision to require Membership. For the record I support the proposal on the agenda. You may have guessed.

[JulianClissold]

I write this as one of the team who ran the ECF National Schools Under 11 in 2013 and is involved with others in running the equivalent tournament this year. I also have many years involvement in the EPSCA National Schools Tournament, running zonals and controlling in semi-finals and finals.
First of all it is importnat to acknowledge that the 2013 tournament had very many teething problems; some wrong decisions were made by Angela and myself, based mainly on trying to replicate the Under 19 tournament at a younger age group. I think the current team is stronger and has learnt some lessons from that; this year's tournament should be more robust.

Second we should respond to Sean H's earlier intervention into this thread by being clear as to what the tournament is trying to do. We want to extend opportunity and involvement for the widest level of the junior chess population. This means more schools, more children, more junior chess clubs. EPSCA, UK Chess Challenge and Junior 4NCL together with Chess in Schools and Communities already make a very substantial contribution to this. But it is not enough; they do not between them fill all the gaps across the country. It may be enough in the London and Home Counties who have established a very fine base for junior chess. If you are in the north west that opportunity is much more limited. Many of our local schools get to play in the UK Chess Challenge and the first round of the EPSCA National Schools and then there is little else; Manchester Junior Chess and other local associations run local events but they are still relatively few.
The ECF initiative provides new opportunities regionally. It is itended to have a broad base so that new schools can participate and new juniors. It is also meant to be an opportunity for the best juniors to play each other nationally. (It is meant to provide opportunities at both ends of the pyramid that is junior chess). It will include children who are very ambitious for their chess and children who are getting involved for the first time.
We still have much to do and more collaborations to effect - Manchester Junior Chess offers free entry to children in CSC schools in Bolton and I would like to extend that to the ECF event - but we are still at the starting gate.

So where does the issue of ECF membership sit with this? Well frankly it is a distraction. In Manchester our strong juniors join anyway. If I had to ask schools to enter their juniors in the ECF I would be placing another obstacle in the way. We want less not more obstacles. I do not think that ECF Board have explored yet the various ways in which this could be managed outside the current offer of one year free membership. Austin's suggestion has merit but I think there are further ways this could be developed.
What is the desired outcome:
Lots of children playing chess
Lots of children identifying the chess they play with the ECF
Minimum bureaucracy for teachers
Minimum cost for schools
A gateway to other chess opportunities
There are others but that is a start; we won't get further than that without a serious conversation about options.

[Neill Cooper]

...
So where does the issue of ECF membership sit with this? Well frankly it is a distraction. In Manchester our strong juniors join anyway. If I had to ask schools to enter their juniors in the ECF I would be placing another obstacle in the way. We want less not more obstacles. I do not think that ECF Board have explored yet the various ways in which this could be managed outside the current offer of one year free membership. Austin's suggestion has merit but I think there are further ways this could be developed.
What is the desired outcome:
Lots of children playing chess
Lots of children identifying the chess they play with the ECF
Minimum bureaucracy for teachers
Minimum cost for schools
A gateway to other chess opportunities
There are others but that is a start; we won't get further than that without a serious conversation about options.

The issue of "bureaucracy for teachers" is an important one. Of the 100 schools who entered last year's U19 National Schools Chess Championships, all but a handful of teams were run by school staff. Some of the teachers are active chess players, but they are in a minority. Most school teams are run by people who do not play ECF graded chess, but still wish to encourage their pupils to play chess against other schools. In the majority of schools the chess organisers have no dealings with the ECF.

Hence the added bureaucracy of insisting that all players in the National Schools Chess Championships are ECF members will result in some schools not entering, and others playing matches with ineligible players.

[Sean Hewitt]

It would be really helpful (for me anyway) if the junior community could tell us

a) which schools you think should be able to enter this event

and

b) which matches should be graded

One of the problems with this whole debate is that I don't think I've seen a coherent answer to these two questions.

[Roger de Coverly]

a) which schools you think should be able to enter this event

The ECF took over running the competition from The Times (before that it was the Sunday Times). The original concept was that any school in the UK could enter, thus inclusive of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Indeed it was originally designed probably by Hugh Alexander in the 1950s as a means of promoting secondary school chess. Establishing that Schools could play one another at chess as well as at physical sports must have contributed to producing an England team second only to the Soviet Union in the 1980s by generating a repeated base of competitive younger players.

b) which matches should be graded

Presumably all those played under acceptable minimum standards, ie with clocks and where a connection could be made with existing graded players.

Obviously I misunderstand the role of non-Executive directors, but a bit of pointing out the obvious to the ECF Board would not have come amiss.

[Sean Hewitt]

Obviously I misunderstand the role of non-Executive directors, but a bit of pointing out the obvious to the ECF Board would not have come amiss.

Apologies if it wasn't clear, but I was hoping to hear what folk thought should be the answers. Of course, we know what has been the case up to now. In particular, the event breaks the ECF's own rules on grading at the moment!