DfE Programme - resources for schools
CSC is delighted to be working with the DfE to ensure more girls, pupils in receipt of free school meals, and children with special educational needs get access to chess. Here you can find resources and information about tournaments for schools taking part in this programme. If you have any questions about any of these resources, please contact your CSC Regional Coordinator.
Teaching Resources
Our award-winning curriculum consisting of 30 lesson plans, worksheets and handouts can be downloaded here. In addition, there are more worksheets, videos, and links to Kahoot! quizzes here. You should have received CSC workbooks along with the chess sets we provided, but if you need more, please speak to your Regional Coordinator.
Training
We run regular staff training courses for teachers and teaching assistants looking to run their own school chess clubs. These cover the methods we use to teach chess, learning resources, and ideas for running a club. For a calendar and to book a place, please visit this page. Your school should have received a promo code for a free place on one of these courses. If you don’t have that, please contact your CSC Regional Coordinator.
Online accounts
ChessKid is an online platform that allows children to learn and play chess in an environment designed to be safe for primary school children. If we haven’t already supplied you with ChessKid accounts, or if you need more, please contact Joe Wilson. Joe will also be able to set you up with a teacher’s account, enabling you to monitor progress and reset passwords. We have guides to ChessKid available for schools and for pupils.
Lichess is an online platform that allows players to compete in tournaments and against opponents of all standards from around the world. For safeguarding reasons, we strongly recommend that your pupils use student accounts that have all chat and messaging functions permanently switched off. Joe Wilson can set those up for you. We have guides to Lichess available for schools and for pupils.
CSC Tournaments
Over the course of the 2026/27 academic year, CSC will be running many tournaments specifically for schools and pupils in our DfE programme. These will include:
weekly individual ChessKid tournaments that children can compete in from home. These will take place each Sunday afternoon at 4pm, starting after the autumn half-term break. More details here soon. We will send a small prize to each winner (via their school).
fortnightly school team Lichess tournaments that students can compete in from home. These will take place every other Monday, from 4.30pm-5.30pm, starting after the autumn half-term break. A team consists of up to 10 players. For more details and to enter a team, please contact Joe Wilson. We will send medals to each winning school.
CSC regional tournaments both online and in person. These will take place across the country in the spring and summer terms. We will send invitations to each school nearer the time.
If you want advice on how to run your own in-school tournament, your CSC Regional Coordinator will be able to help.
National Tournaments
We are happy to recommend the following national competitions, run by respected third parties:
Delancey UK Schools’ Chess Challenge. Schools are provided with an excellent pack of chess goodies and instructions on how to run a tournament within their own school, usually over 7 weeks in the spring term. This leads on to a series of individual tournaments (Megafinals, Gigafinals, Terafinals) resulting national winners for each age-group. Over 30,000 children take part each year. You can register for a schools’ pack here. We hope to be able to provide a discount code on this page soon.
English Chess Federation (ECF) National Schools Chess Championships. Teams of 6 players, predominantly from secondary schools, compete in a series of local, regional, and national competitions to determine the overall winning school. This event is of an extremely high standard in the finals, but the opening rounds are suitable for any school. ECF Gold Schools Membership is required at a cost of £30 per school. Once you have that, you can enter here.
ECF Girls Schools Chess Championships. Teams of 3 players compete in regional and national competitions to determine overall winning schools. There are separate sections for secondary and primary schools. ECF Gold Schools Membership is required at a cost of £30 per school. Once you have that, you can enter here.
British Junior Team Chess Challenge. Teams of 4 players compete in regional and national competitions to determine overall winning schools. There are three separate sections, for Years 7-13 (seniors), Years 7&8 only (juniors), and for Y6 and below (primary). ECF Bronze Schools Membership is required at a cost of £10 per school. Once you have that, you can enter here: seniors, juniors, primary.
