Chess equipment for a school: what to buy for a class

For a group of twenty children - ten simultaneous games:

• 10 boards with pieces. One per pair. Buying fewer means children waiting, and a waiting child stops being interested.
• 1 demonstration board. The one purchase beyond the minimum that genuinely pays for itself - see below.
• 5-10 clocks. Not needed for the first months, then increasingly so.
• Printed puzzle sheets. Costs nothing and does more for learning than any equipment.
• Somewhere to keep it. A cupboard that locks, in the room where the group meets.

Everything else - timers, scoresheets, banners, trophies - is optional and can wait until there is a reason for it.

On size: a king of about 8-9 cm with squares to match is the tournament standard and the right choice for a class. Smaller pieces are harder for children to handle and easier to lose.

And buy one spare set. Pieces disappear in a school faster than anywhere else, and a set missing a knight is a set nobody can use.

Not at first, then yes. In the first months a clock only creates panic; after that it becomes one of the most motivating objects in the room.

• Introduce them once games get played. Roughly from the point where children finish a full game.
• Start with a long control. Fifteen minutes or more, so the clock disciplines rather than frightens.
• Digital, not mechanical. Increments matter with children: they stop games ending in a scramble.
• Half the tables is enough at first. Rotate which pairs use them.
• Children love them. Which is itself a reason: a clock makes a game feel like a real one.

Everything else on this page is either compulsory or postponable. The demonstration board is the exception: it is not strictly necessary and it changes how a group works.

Without one, explaining a position to twenty children means twenty children crowding around one small board - which does not work, and takes five minutes to organise every single time. With one, the explanation takes as long as the explanation.

• A large board on the wall with flat magnetic pieces, visible from the back of the room.
• A screen works too if the room has one - the point is the size, not the technology - the options compared.
• It costs about the same as two or three ordinary sets. And it improves every single lesson.

How a session using one is structured - running a children's group.

• A lockable cupboard in the room itself. Equipment kept elsewhere in the building is equipment that arrives late and incomplete.
• Pieces bagged, one set per bag. The same rule as anywhere, and doubly true with children.
• Numbered sets. Write a number on each bag and board, so a missing piece is traced to a set.
• A count at the end of each session. Thirty seconds, and it prevents the slow disappearance of a collection.
• One person responsible. Shared responsibility for equipment means none.

If the group travels to events, the packing rules are the same - transporting a set.

A school chess group frequently starts with no money at all. That is workable.

• Ask parents. Most households with a child interested in chess own a set that is never used. A request in a parents' chat usually produces five boards in a week.
• Ask the local federation or club. Clubs replacing their equipment give the old sets away, and they are perfectly good for a class.
• Ask a local business. Boards and a demonstration board are a small, concrete, visible thing to sponsor - far easier to say yes to than a vague donation - about funding.
• Print puzzles. The most effective teaching material in the room costs paper.
• Start with six boards. A group of twelve is a perfectly good start, and it grows into equipment rather than waiting for it.

What not to do: delay starting until the equipment is complete. A group running with borrowed boards for a term is a group that exists; one waiting for a budget usually never starts - running a school tournament.