To not pay £6.50 for chess club?

[StuntNun]

DS2 asked me last week whether he could go to the school chess club and I said yes. However he has brought the flyer home today and it's £78 per term so £6.50 per week for 12 weeks. I think that it's far too expensive and I'll teach him to play chess at home instead. AIBU to not want to fork out £78 for chess club?

[Mumoftwoyoungkids]

Are they being taught by a grand master?!?

[jellycat1]

Really? I think that's pretty good!

[sparechange]

Would you be prepared to pay that for another sport or activity? If so, YABU to not pay for chess. The room still needs to be lit, the equipment still needs to be bought...

Presumably the advantage of chess club is being able to play against other people for practice, as well as the social aspect, so you aren't going to be able to replicate that at home, although you could always teach the basic game to see if he is going to enjoy it enough to sign up for a term?

[aprilanne]

to be honest that sounds ok .playing at home with your mum is not the same if you can afford it it sounds good

[BuntyFigglesworthSpiffington]

If you can't afford it well then YANBU.

But if you can afford it and you just don't think it's worth it then you're possibly BU. He might prefer to learn to play chess in this environment?

[ZippyNeedsFeeding]

My son loves chess and if there was someone who could coach him and help him to improve his game then I'd pay £6.50 a week no bother.

The social aspect of being in a room with other kids who don't mock him for loving chess would be worth it on its own IMO. Plus they may enter competitions or meet up with other clubs.

[harderandharder2breathe]

If you can afford it and would pay it for a different activity then yabu

The social side and playing against different people is what makes it better than just playing at home with mum

[CecilyP]

Most classes priced at that level have a teacher teaching them. If it is just an opportunity to play chess with other children who like playing chess, I think it is expensive.

[Discobabe]

I thought it was going to be £6.50 for the half term! Yanbu.

[t4nut]

Room has to be rented and manned. £6.50 for 45mins? An hour? Doesn't sound extortionate.

[EweAreHere]

It's too much. I assume this is an after school club, where the chess club leader just sets up her chess boards for the children and they play chess. Even after school sporting clubs, with outside providers, don't cost nearly this much in Cambridgeshire! They range from about £3-5 per week, with £5 being unusual.

[CheeseFlavouredDiscs]

I guess it depends where you live and what kind if school DS goes to. If you live in an affluent area and DS goes to a private school or a school where practically everyone is middle class, then I suspect its considered to be a reasonable rate. However if you live in a deprived inner city borough and attend the local academy chain then I'd expect it to be run for free.

Strange the way these things work!?

[icouldabeenacontender]

Unless he's being taught by Garry Kasparov I think it's quite expensive tbh.

[Madeyemoodysmum]

I think it's expensive too in fact I wouldn't let my ds go to a similar priced one myself. Your not in Herts are you ?
We already pay for swimming tennis and dance and riding between him and his sister. It's too much.

[AppleAndBlackberry]

That definitely sounds expensive, I wouldn't expect to pay more than £5 for an externally run club e.g. football and no more than about £2 or £3 for a teacher led club (most of ours are actually free).

[Oblomov16]

Sounds a lot to me. Ds1 went to chess club and it was nowhere near that price.

[TheNaze73]

Sounds like a good deal to me

[JellyBelli]

That would be expensive for where I live.

[imip]

Gosh, it's around £18 a term here! Yes, inner city deprived school with a hell of a lot of middle class families in an area that has well and truly arrived!

[LauraRoslin]

My chess club charges about £10 per year, but then we are getting the venue for free. Back when we had to pay for venues, I think our annual membership fee was on the order of £30.

[StuntNun]

The club is run in a classroom for an hour after school by a retired schoolteacher. I don't mind paying for the club it just seems excessively expensive. My DS1 runs the chess club at his school and it's free.

[CatLover69]

If it's in London that's not unusual. Range of after school paid options at DS school and they're all within the 60-100 bracket for a term.

[Floralnomad]

So basically £6.50 for an hour of childcare and entertainment , seems reasonable to me .

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

It's a dozen years since my son left primary school and I can't remember exactly what we paid, but it wasn't massively less than that, as far as I can recall. His chess club took place at lunchtime in his school, so I doubt there was a charge for the room, but there would have been other costs to cover. The sessions were run by a chess club which ran clubs in schools all over SE London, Kent and Surrey. They organised a league for all the school clubs with termly competitions feeding into the London Junior Chess Championship (or some similar title). The teacher was a very keen amateur with a good FIDE rating (hope I'm getting the terminology right, I'm not a chess player personally). He was CRB cleared (as it was at the time), as were all the other club officials. So the club fees had to cover the teacher's time (travelling as well as teaching) and the club admin costs.

It was definitely worth it in our case. Our son got a huge amount out of his chess playing, and so did many of the other regulars at the club. My husband is a moderately good player, but our son was already beating him regularly even before he joined the club. The teacher gave him a lot more guidance than we could have done. He got to play chess regularly and really enjoyed the competitions. There was a great stress on good sportsmanship and etiquette and that was very beneficial too. It's important to learn to lose gracefully and not to crow when you win. I think it fed back into his academic work too, as chess is really good for developing logical thinking, memory and planning.

If you can run to it and you think your son would like it, I'd go for it personally.

[BigTroubleInLittleChina]

Let him try it, he may really enjoy it, plus it's the social aspect too.

If it's anything like our school you'll probably find the classes are cancelled at a moments notice and you spend weeks trying to get your money back from the women in the office.