Certificate of Merit

[Richard James]

Andy,
Both you and Matt have some valid points. However, most teachers are going to check out the certificate of merit site and try the practise test before ordering the DVD and book etc. If registration is problematic and the practise tests are not that good (compare them with the free tests available at chesskids.com), then how many teachers are going to buy the package. I would suggest not many, so the DVD might be brilliant, the book might be superb, the certificate and badge might be incredible, but people are not going to see them.

Many thanks for the plug, Matthew. A new and much improved version of chessKIDS academy will be released later in the year, together with a story book for children written to acccompany the website, which is scheduled for publication in October.

I was originally supposed to be closely involved in the Chess for Schools scheme, but it all seemed to fall through somewhere along the line. From my point of view, probably just as well...

[John Upham]

I've uploaded a reworked version of the Student registration form to live (http://www.certificateofmerit.org.uk/) and added a bunch of new questions for the General Knowledge level with associated images.

If anyone would like to contribute Q&As for the General Knowledge level then I would appreciate your contribution. I need 1 question, one correct answer and four false answers per question. If you have a preferred image for the question then please send that also to [email protected]

[Carl Hibbard]

And finally, I would remind Holloid that this is an ECF programme from which it has gained considerable marketing bang without actually delivering what it promised.

I think it's gone beyond the abandon it stage from the ECF end, lets instead blame the economic downturn and let the thing continue to run...

[Roger de Coverly]

I think it's gone beyond the abandon it stage from the ECF end, lets instead blame the economic downturn and let the thing continue to run...

Wasn't the economic and marketing premise that the sets would be made from "free" waste plastic? Is the relative lack of sets down to the absence of "free" waste plastic as raw material?

1. The plastics industry in the UK has been very supportive and basically offered as much material as we need to produce the sets.

[John Upham]

I'm led to believe that HP are claiming that an upturn in business from money paying customers has swamped production such that they do not currently have capacity to produce free sets. They must be very happy!

I'm confident that the CEO has a much more accurate and detailed account of what is not happening.

I'm aware that there is much demand to the ECF Office and little or no supply. This is very frustrating for the Office staff.

The question is : will this detail be made public?

I suspect most people have simply given up being interested any longer.

Obviously, the marketing of CoM has become significantly more challenged than was hoped a couple of years ago.

[John Saunders]

For quite a long time now, I've thought of the CfS project as the "Weapons of Mass Deployment" project. Like the Iraq WMD controversy, it started with something that only certain politicians believed (on the one hand, that there were WMDs in Iraq and, in the chess example, that every UK school could receive and make use of some chess 'weapons'). However, most people with a bit of savvy thought from the very beginning that (a) the WMD thing was a transparent excuse for making war and (b) that the school chess kit project was unachievable. In both cases, these figments of political imagination were used to prop up people's positions and deflect attention away from pressing problems elsewhere.

[Neill Cooper]

If you go to http://www.sccu.ndo.co.uk/0708/bcf.htm you will see one person's account of the meeting where a 'loan' from John Robinson Trust was made to the ECF for financing the school package. (I have not looked very hard for the official minutes on the ECF website.)

In view of the vastly changed situation with respect to Holloid Plastics, the failure to set up any academies and the delays to the CoM project (despite the hard work of people like John Upham) it seems appropriate that the ECF should review the whole project, and the status of the JRT 'loan', in the near future. The project is now nothing like that discussed and funded in July 2008. A new way forward, including appropriate funding and publicity, needs to be agreed by the ECF.

[Carl Hibbard]

If you go to http://www.sccu.ndo.co.uk/0708/bcf.htm you will see one person's account of the meeting where a 'loan' from John Robinson Trust was made to the ECF for financing the school package. (I have not looked very hard for the official minutes on the ECF website.)

An excellent URL pickup that one and shows how little has been achieved

Including the classic:

Someone said, from the top table: "If we foul up on this no one will ever trust us to do anything again."

[David Sedgwick]

I've made some comments on this subject in the thread about the John Robinson Trust.

Including the classic:

Someone said, from the top table: "If we foul up on this no one will ever trust us to do anything again."

It is perhaps worth mentioning that the man who made that remark is no longer an ECF Director.

(No names mentioned, but his excellent successor is frequently to be found on this Forum.)

[Matthew Turner]

The ECF accounts include

"In addition, the development work developing the Certificate of Merit programme should be classified as fixed asset rather than stock. The current outturn forecast assumes that the ECF will book the costs of developing Certificate of Merit to the income and expenditure account over an operating life of five years, starting in 2009-10. As a result, £4,500 will be charged against this activity in this financial year. "

Am I reading this correctly? Has the CoM cost £22,500 to develop?

[andrew martin]

The majority of that cost is a salaried office person who is supposed to be looking after Chess Sets for Schools as far as I understand it.

[Matthew Turner]

Andy,
Chess For Schools shows a £10,000 expenditure for 2009/10 (versus a £100 income), so I don't think CoM has paid any Office salaries this year. What happens next year who knows? The projected surplus of £10,000 next year all comes from increased membership fees £41,000 in 2009/10 to £52,000 in 2010/11. Is this really realistic? I doubt it.

[andrew martin]

I think you will just have to take this up with the ECF Board. I have more or less given up on Chess Sets for Schools, which has been a major disappointment all round.

I am plugging on trying to get COM sorted out properly, so that as much money can be made to help English Chess as possible. If all goes well, with strong marketing, the scheme should succeed.

[Alex Holowczak]

The projected surplus of £10,000 next year all comes from increased membership fees £41,000 in 2009/10 to £52,000 in 2010/11. Is this really realistic? I doubt it.

The standard membership has gone up 20% in price (which is the bulk of the members), and that estimate in increased membership fees is roughly a 20% increase. The basic membership increased by 20% last year (if memory serves me correctly), and membership still increased.

[Angus French]

The ECF accounts include

"In addition, the development work developing the Certificate of Merit programme should be classified as fixed asset rather than stock. The current outturn forecast assumes that the ECF will book the costs of developing Certificate of Merit to the income and expenditure account over an operating life of five years, starting in 2009-10. As a result, £4,500 will be charged against this activity in this financial year. "

Am I reading this correctly? Has the CoM cost £22,500 to develop?

Well, there's a Budget Report (C12.10.1-Budget-Report.doc) which refers, under section 4.0 Capital Expenditure, to: "Approval to transfer the £24,000 Certificate of Merit development expenditure incurred in 2009-10".

If the expenditure has already been incurred, has the CoM development work been signed-off? If it has they by who and what were the acceptance criteria?