Best Practice – Armenia

Armenia, one of the best examples on Chess & Education.

2011 Chess introduced as a compulsory academic (not sport) subject in all primary schools in the country. The three-year programme started with Year 2 and was rolled out over the following years to extend to Years 3 and 4.

2012 Research began to be conducted into the effectiveness and results of the programme. By 2014, the year in which the first children completed the full chess programme, initial results were complete.

2012/2013 Chess became a subject in the Faculty of Primary Education at the Armenian State Pedagogical University. Over the years, this has developedd into a 4-year Bachelor degree programme.

https://cis.fide.com/en/chess-news/351-armenia-state-pedagogical-university-aspu

2014 Publication of research results to coincide with the International Conference Chess in Schools in Yerevan.

A 136 page booklet was published containing the conference proceedings.

The full booklet is a large download [61,5mb]:

https://cloud.fide.com/s/roMGCNaWtmgxrKZ0421

One of the most important presentations [2mb download]:

IMPACT_OF_CHESS_LESSONS_ON_FORMATION_AND_DEVELOPMENT_OF_THE_STUDENTS.pdf

2015 The Chess Educational Research Centre (CERC) was founded at the Armenian State Pedagogical University in order to continue and expand the research in the directions of methodology, psychology and sociology.

2016 Tsaghkadzor conference: Theoretical and Practical Issues of Chess Education in Schools. Booklet of proceedings [13,5mb download] : https://cloud.fide.com/s/6yMnMbNbtySDMya

2017 Another important paper – Ruben Mirzakhanyan et al., Analysis of the Efficiency of Teaching Chess in Schools https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318679174_Analysis_of_the_Efficiency_of_Teaching_Chess_in_Schools

2018 The CERC became the Chess Scientific Research Institue (CSRI) which today (2020) has 20 full-time researchers on chess in education. Their work includes research into materials, teaching methodologies and efficiency, teacher training, SEN (Special Educational Needs), working with pre-school children and new models for distance learning.

2019 Third International Conference, Tsaghkadzor.  http://icce2019.chessacademy.am/

Chess in Education has combined with competitive chess :Since 2005, inter-school chess tournaments called School Chess Olympiad have been held that last for half a year with 4 stages and are attended by about 16,000 children each year. It is already 15 years this Olympiad is being held . It is a very desirable and attractive tournament and has changed the attitude of schoolchildren and parents towards chess