At the end of July 2017, at a meeting with the President of the International Chess Federation Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the Minister of Education and Science of Russia Olga Vasilyeva said that the study of chess in school should become mandatory as part of extracurricular activities. Vasilyeva stressed that the curriculum should not be overloaded: chess should become obligatory in optional classes only.
First Vice-President of the Moscow Chess Federation Nikita Kim called Ilyumzhinov the ideologist of the Chess in School programme. According to Kim, “Ilyumzhinov first tested it in Kalmykia when he was the head of the region. He collected school principals and asked them to think about voluntarily introducing chess lessons. Relatively speaking, 10 per cent of schools have tried it. A year passed and it became clear that academic performance in all subjects had improved there. The number of wrongdoings has sharply gone down. Schools became more trouble-free. Others looked at this story and decided to do it. And so it went. This has been tested not only in Russia but also in other countries many times. For example, in Armenia and Turkey the chess education is universal.”
On 17 and 18 November, trainings for development of chess teachers were held in Moscow. The classes were organized by the Moscow Centre for the Development of Educational Personnel Potential together with the Moscow Chess Federation.
“At the training, they were taught methods of teaching chess, solving chess problems, developing tactical combinations, and the rules for organizing and conducting circle work and competitions in this sport. Within two years, more than 4 thousand teachers of the capital have received such training within the framework of the Chess in School project of the Moscow Department of Education,” according to the press service of the Moscow City Department of Education.
