Starting a Junior Club

[Trefor Owens]

Sittingbourne Chess Club are moving to better/bigger premises and looking to start a Junior section later this year.

If anyone has any tips regarding contacting local schools and knowledge of what has to be done legally, CRB checks etc. I would be very grateful for any advice

Thanking you in advance

Trefor

[William Metcalfe]

If the parents are staying with the children CRB checks are not needed if the kids are there alone you need CRB checks.
The cheepest way to go is probably through the ECF CRB scheme.

A display board is essential for teaching
Darlington set up a new junior club this year and has grown from 3/4 children to 10/12 regs now
After the kids had been comming for about 3 months we started a junior torny with the winner getting a nice trophy to keep for a year.
The most important thing is to let the kids have fun with things like capture chess which is great way to learn tactics.
My advice is to get the right ballance of fun and teaching

[Kevin Wilson]

You do not need a CRB check to run an amateur club (the CRB check lady told me that when I was filling in the form for my CRB).

Step 1 - Find a few juniors to form the base of the club. Members children for example.

Step 2 - Advertise the club in local schools. See if you can get a feature in the local paper. Create a flyer and place it in local shops, libraries, halls etc...

Step 3 - Make the club fun for the kids, but make sure they get some coaching.

Once you have the club running word of mouth kicks in.

[Philip Adams]

Some ideas based on 3Cs that might help:
Form a small core of enthusiastic organisers;
Find a base for a junior club;
Form links with some local primary schools;
Encourage local primary schools to start chess clubs;
Offer manpower to help run these primary school chessclubs;
Run some competitions for these primary schools to bring them together;
Involve parents - they are far more important than teachers these days (but the Headteachers' cooperation is vital, since they are the “gatekeepers” and also hold purse strings);
Don't teach beginners; invite youngsters of a suitable standard to attend your club, which becomes the basis of a centre of excellence;
On club nights, use the rule of thumb: 10 per cent coaching - 90 per cent play;
Have faith that quantity will eventually produce quality;
Identify any real talents and move them forward quickly - these become role models and feed back quality and confidence into the project;
Form a town team to enter EPSCA team competitions if there isn't one already;
Enter a team in a local adult league as soon as that becomes realistic - the initial team should include at least two adults.

I'm sure I've missed out some important things.
You might also find this helpful, although it's overdue an update:
http://www.btinternet.com/~cccs.chess/C ... aching.htm

[John Upham]

The ECF has published guidelines at http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=591

[Kevin Wilson]

Advertising clubs is difficult. I have tried several different methods during the first year of our little junior club.

This weekend we ran a stall at the local town carnival (see some photos here http://darlingtonchessclub.blogspot.com/) to try and publicise the club. We had quite a few interested kids and adults and 2 actually turned up and hopefully more will follow.

Does anybody else have any novel ideas?