Certificate of Merit

[John Upham]

CoM and CfS were originally intended to be closely coupled projects. Those schools receiving their free sets would be invited to register for CoM.

In theory CoM can be wholly independent of CfS however, in reality, the marketing of CoM is strongly dependant on CfS.

From the outset we (or at least I) proceeded making no assumptions about the success of CfS. Technically there were no dependencies.

Now, I expect CoM to be marketed to all the CfS schools (regardless of receiving free sets) and all other schools who have not requested free sets.

My definition of a CfS school is one that has requested free sets (in any CfS Phase) and has either received them or not : it matters not to CoM.

The other aspect to CoM (and possibly the means by which it will generate the largest revenue stream) is that it will be thrown open to individuals who are not tied to a school or organisation. Essentially , this makes CoM an international application which may even be endorsed by FIDE. We need to solve the payment means for individuals as this could easily flood the office beyond their capacity. The number of certificates going out world-wide could be staggering. Imagine CoM take-up by India or China but they may already have their own offerings?

However, some of this is speculation and in much flux.

[Stewart Reuben]

John Upham >Stewart Reuben wanted to make some minor changes to CoM during his brief reign including raising the price of a CoM credit to £6 and dumbing-down the pass mark to 14/20.<

Unless I have been thwarted, a LV= COM credit costs £6 for one and £150 for 30. Otherwise I fear the more we sell, the more money we will lose.
The only evidence we have about the pass rated for the LV= COM is based on the free trials where pupils were able to tackle the test as often as they liked and were then graded according to their best result. Under these circumstances the pass rate was about 50%. I prefer to encourage children to continue with chess, rather than give up.

No marketing initiative can take place before the payment system is in place.

There is a decision to be made about which I am uncertain. Should it be marketed only to schools that have received the 10 free chess sets, or all be targetted at once? The former, favoured by Kirstie, has the advantage of targetting schools which will be kindly disposed to the whole project. The latter has the advantage of possibly increasing our cash flow quite dramatically. Of course we can market the LV= COM Scheme to individuals, clubs and schools ouside England in both cases.

Of course all these are marketing matters.

Stewart Reuben

[Matthew Turner]

Stewart,
One of the reason for going to an automated on-line Certificate of Merit was that it would be more efficient and cost effective. Are you saying that £5 may not be sufficient to cover the administration costs?

[Carl Hibbard]

There is a decision to be made about which I am uncertain. Should it be marketed only to schools that have received the 10 free chess sets, or all be targetted at once? The former, favoured by Kirstie, has the advantage of targetting schools which will be kindly disposed to the whole project. The latter has the advantage of possibly increasing our cash flow quite dramatically. Of course we can market the LV= COM Scheme to individuals, clubs and schools ouside England in both cases.

Has to be the former, explaining why the schools have no sets (after over a year is it?) and then suggesting they pay for a certificate would be rather a hard sell!

[Michael Bennett]

The number of certificates going out world-wide could be staggering.

Just wondering: is there some reason why you couldn't generate the certificate for them on-line if they pass a test, so that they can just print it out?

[John Upham]

The number of certificates going out world-wide could be staggering.

Just wondering: is there some reason why you couldn't generate the certificate for them on-line if they pass a test, so that they can just print it out?

Not at all. In fact this was one of my early suggestions in 2008. I would use the students details to create a new pdf file for the CoM certificate and allow the student to print it out at their leisure.

It was decided to allow the ECF Office to print the certificate on certificate quality paper, laminate it and then send it out with various ECF goodies to the school admin person for presentation in assembly.
I think this is a good solution for classes of children.

However, when we release CoM to individuals then my suggestion may well become the better option. I welcome feedback as always.

I can only offer the solutions...

[Michael Bennett]

I see. Well the printable certificate option seems like it might be a good idea for individual learners if CoM goes 'global'.

I have to say I'm surprised about the intention to laminate the certificates. I used to make a lot of laminates for my work, and I found it painstaking and time-consuming: there was always some wastage of the laminating pouches and re-printing to do it when the laminate did not seal properly. And if I was doing a large number of them, this would always happen on at least a few.

Also, I'm wondering how much the total cost will be of:
- laminating pouch
- quality certificate paper
- printer ink
- envelope
- postage
- address label
- ECF goodies
- payment for person's time taken to produce the package ?

Will that come to less than £6?

[Sean Hewitt]

I see. Well the printable certificate option seems like it might be a good idea for individual learners if CoM goes 'global'.

I have to say I'm surprised about the intention to laminate the certificates. I used to make a lot of laminates for my work, and I found it painstaking and time-consuming: there was always some wastage of the laminating pouches and re-printing to do it when the laminate did not seal properly. And if I was doing a large number of them, this would always happen on at least a few.

Also, I'm wondering how much the total cost will be of:
- laminating pouch
- quality certificate paper
- printer ink
- envelope
- postage
- address label
- ECF goodies
- payment for person's time taken to produce the package ?

Will that come to less than £6?

I hope that that's a rhetorical question because the answer is "of course not!" No doubt one of the reasons why Stewart insisted on raising the price.

Schools are well versed in printing certifiactes for all sorts of things and would have had exactly the right sort of paper for the job. It's just another example of introducing inefficiency into the process, and creating unneccessary work for the office in the process.

[Stewart Reuben]

Matthew Turner >One of the reason for going to an automated on-line Certificate of Merit was that it would be more efficient and cost effective. Are you saying that £5 may not be sufficient to cover the administration costs?<

That is probably being rather pessimstic.But Sean has pointed out some of the costs. My experience is in books,where the production cost, including royalties are multiplied by 5 and that gives the cover price. But this is not analagous. Only the people whp pass get the certificate plus badge (itself about £1). Plus we are marketing inhouse. The cover price for a book has to be divided by 2 to determine the income as the bookseller of course has his margin.

The idea of printing off the certificates at the school has much to commend it. Even so there would be the cost of posting a number of badges out.

Stewart Reuben

[Peter Turner]

Matthew,

We are completing the analysis of the results plus the detailed feedback from Neill Cooper.

We need to test (but not via another trial) some admin functions for the schools and the ECF Office.

The main question mark now surrounds the means of payment for credits.

I believe that once these issues have been resolved we can add the look and feel requirements for the sponsor.

We could then go live for schools at least. This forum will be kept informed. I've not heard one iota from the current CfS manager (The CEO) so I've no idea if he is interested or not.

I am away in France at the moment at the Cappelle International - have I missed an update!!
Cappelle:- Mark Hebden is live on board 5 v Csaba Balogh HUN 2619 (1 o'clock). George O'Toole having lost to a 2500 GM yesterday gets a 2623 GM today!!

[John Upham]

have I missed an update!!

There is much activity behind the scenes mainly by Kirstie and myself.

I am putting the final touches to the code that analyses the results and manages the distribution of certificates adding as much automation as we can to make CoM a 24 x 7 operation.

Kirstie, Andrew Walker and I are working hard on the payment system so that the ECF shop will trigger the CoM application with credits rather than the Office having to do this by hand.

We think we have found the appropriate plugin for WordPress to do this.

We are working on a solution for the application to auto-generate bespoke certificates in case we are bored with the other things.

We are hoping to finalise the marketing aspects as these have been rather fluxional of late and each and every change of mind impacts on both documents to be sent out and look and feel aspects to the website.

I'm hoping to finalise the agreed version of the live CoM domain. The IT "committee" had chosen an ill-advised domain with two(!) hyphens in it. This is very obviously poor and I'm not going to allow a poor domain name choice to spoil our efforts.

Imagine having to repeat :

www dot chess hyphen for hyphen schools dot org dot uk several times on the end of a telephone and you would also go insane so that is a non-starter.


Meanwhile, I have attempted to organise two lots of probate, four 4NCL teams, various league teams, play at Uxbridge and spend a night in A&E through probable nervous exhaustion!

Apart from that, things are quiet!

[Matthew Turner]

John,
To be fair you didn't manage to play at Uxbridge, you haven't been able to organise four 4NCL teams and we still haven't had an update on the final COM trial. We have however heard about your many effort to revolutionise the Office. I fear you may be spreading yourself too thin.

[Carl Hibbard]

Imagine having to repeat :

www dot chess hyphen for hyphen schools dot org dot uk several times on the end of a telephone and you would also go insane so that is a non-starter.

The two projects should be separate so the CoM can distance itself from CfS in my opinion - you really don't want one paying for other if care is not taken...

[John Upham]

John,
To be fair you didn't manage to play at Uxbridge, you haven't been able to organise four 4NCL teams and we still haven't had an update on the final COM trial. We have however heard about your many effort to revolutionise the Office. I fear you may be spreading yourself too thin.

I played one poor game, went home, collapsed in a Chinese restaurant, spent the evening in A&E and the next night throwing up. We have 2.5 4NCL teams from a squad of 44 players which I find rather disturbing despite my efforts to secure four teams. You could have asked about the work required as executor of two estates as the same time : Maybe I should publish this?

Internally we are happy in the main from the outcomes from the final trial albeit without the payment system being in place. This is my main concern right now whilst dealing with a "many cooks" situation vis a vis CoM.

Obviously, my main priority should be to satisfy the demands of this forum : I should have realised that!

[Matthew Turner]

John,
You have published the results of all the other trials, it just seems a bit odd that you haven't published the results from Wilson's School. I notice too that Neill Cooper hasn't made any comment. This worries me, because Neill is a chess enthusiast and I would have thought he would have been keen to trumpet the trial's success.