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The Alcuin School, a Leeds based independent day school, has won a prestigious chess award by the British Chess Federation (BCF) in recognition of it’s services to chess.

The British Chess Educational Trust Award is an award made by the BCF to schools in recognition of their achievements in and promotion of chess. The award is made annually to one school in each of the BCF’s seven constituent units covering the whole of the UK and takes the form of an inscribed wooden chess board and a digital chess clock.

The Alcuin School received a recommendation for the award by the Northern Counties Chess Union and was cited by the Yorkshire Chess Association in recognition of the work the school has done to promote the game amongst its own pupils and amongst other schools within the region. The school has also been particularly praised for encouraging more girls to take part in the sport.

The Alcuin School began its involvement with chess approximately eight years ago by setting up a chess club of eight players and now almost every pupil in the school from Year 2 to 6 is actively involved in chess. In the first year of becoming involved with chess the school ran the first UK chess challenge and three of its pupils made it to the Yorkshire Mega Final. Five years ago, the school began to initiate matches with other schools and teamed up with chess coach and International Director of the BCF, Rupert Jones, to form the Leeds League prompting a revival of junior chess in the Leeds area and the successful launch of the Leeds Primary Schools Competition three years ago.

To date The Alcuin School has had four female pupils who have represented Yorkshire county teams, last year produced two Yorkshire Mega Final section winners (U9 girls and U7 Girls) and three qualifiers for the National Final. The school has also hosted girls’ chess tournaments and an extremely successful girls’ coaching day led by the All England Girls Chess Association.

The school hopes to build on its own individual chess achievements later on this year when it has fifteen pupils entered in to the North Yorkshire Mega Final and takes part in the semi finals of the National Primary Schools Chess competition. The Alcuin School will be the only school in Leeds to take part in the semi-finals.

John Hipshon, Headteacher at The Alcuin School, said: “We are delighted to have won this award. Chess plays an extremely important role within the school and the children benefit enormously from being involved with it. The children enjoy playing chess immensely, particularly the social element of meeting children from other schools at tournaments and matches. In addition to this, playing chess also helps them to improve their reasoning skills and concentration.”