Chess in schools in France: official texts, schemes and projects that work

Learning chess at school is not a new idea, but its scale is recent. For a teacher who wants to get started, as for a parent wondering what their child's class is doing, it is useful to know what the texts say, which schemes are on offer and how successful projects are organised.

Chess at school

Chess played in a school, either during class time as a vehicle for learning (maths, language, civic education), or outside class time in a club or school sports association.

Chess at school: a long history

The two education-science researchers Fabien Groeninger and Yves Léal traced this history in an article published by The Conversation in December 2025. As early as the 19th century, a letter to a specialist journal proposed chess as a “noble pastime” for playtime. In the 1970s and 1980s initiatives multiplied, mostly in the form of school clubs, and a few pilot schools even put the game on the timetable. At the end of the 1980s, however, a thesis found that chess remained essentially an after-school activity. Structured programmes developed afterwards, from the 2000s.

The official texts

The 2007 framework agreement

The reference text is the framework agreement concluded in 2007 between the Ministry of National Education and the French Chess Federation, published in the Bulletin officiel. Its recitals state that playing chess contributes to building personality “by encouraging attention, imagination, anticipation, judgement and self-confidence”. This wording has since been repeated on the ministry's official pages.

The 2022 relaunch

In 2022, the FFE became a delegated sports federation and the agreement with the Ministry of National Education was strengthened by the launch of Class'Échecs. The ministry devotes a page to it on Eduscol, entitled “Introducing the game of chess in schools and the Class'Échecs programme”, which presents the game as a tool for building reasoning and for citizenship education. Self-training courses in chess have been offered to teachers on the M@gistère platform since the start of the 2022 school year.

National teaching resources

Eduscol has also used chess as a basis for subject resources. A file prepared for the 2021 Maths Week lists among the abilities developed by the game logical thinking, organising one's thinking, concentration, anticipation, judgement and memory.

The schemes that exist

Beyond these schemes, many académies (regional education authorities) and local inspectorates publish their own “chess and maths” worksheets and projects. The simplest thing for a teacher is to ask their pedagogical adviser: there is often already a local project to join.

Why chess at school?

The arguments put forward by the official texts and by teachers fall into four families.

• ReasoningAnticipating the consequences of a move, checking a hypothesis, comparing options.
• Doing mathsLocating by coordinates, the geometry of moves, counting, calculating values.
• Living togetherRespecting common rules and the opponent, handling victory and defeat.
• IncludingVisual and spatial tasks that require little language, useful for pupils with reading difficulties.

This last point is stressed by Groeninger and Léal: because the game rests on visuo-spatial tasks, it lets pupils who are less comfortable with writing succeed and express themselves. The two authors also see project work as a way of breaking down the barriers between subjects, which suits primary school teachers, who teach every subject.

For a more committed reading of the subject, Le Palais des Échecs explains why French schools are turning to chess against a background of falling pupil attainment.

Chess against school failure?

The idea is tempting, but it must be handled with caution. No study shows that chess is enough to remedy established school failure. One result does deserve attention, however: in the Danish “Your Move” study (Rosholm, Mikkelsen and Gumede, 2017), the small gains in maths are concentrated among pupils who said they were bored or unhappy at school. For these children, a game-based approach seems to revive interest. Conversely, the large English randomised trial (Jerrim et al.) found no average effect on results a year later, including among disadvantaged pupils according to the published accounts. The detail is on the page chess and school success.

How a school organises itself in practice

1. Choose the setting. Class time (one lesson a week, built into maths or a project) or after-school time (club, lunch break).
2. Find the equipment. One chessboard for two pupils and a wall board for demonstrations: that is the basis of the Class'Échecs kit.
3. Plan a progression. One piece at a time, with mini-games before full games. See setting up an educational chess project.
4. Build the project to last. The effects observed in studies tend to appear beyond 25 to 30 hours of practice, or one school year at one lesson a week.
5. Plan a highlight. An internal tournament, a meeting with another school, a simultaneous display against a club player: this is often what motivates pupils.

Example timetable over a year

This timetable is indicative: it assumes one lesson a week and can be adapted to the pupils' age. The Class'Échecs lessons follow a comparable logic, one piece at a time.

And in nursery school?

Class'Échecs starts at CP, but teachers of the grande section (the final year of nursery school) run adapted projects: moving around a grid, recognising the pieces, little racing games. We devote a full page to it: chess in nursery school.