Two Schoolkids Just Rewrote British Chess History. Should Their Game Be in Every School?
On August 9, 2026, at the University of Warwick in Coventry, two young players rewrote the record books at the 2026 British Chess Championships — an event that drew more than 2,600 entries across all sections. Shreyas Royal, 17, from south-east London, became Britain's youngest-ever grandmaster in 2024. Now he can add a first British Championship title to that. Bodhana Sivanandan, just 11, became the youngest-ever British women's champion after overcoming Trisha Kanyamarala in a playoff. Sivanandan began playing chess during lockdown in 2020.
That's the story the headlines ran with. Here's the part most of the reaction skipped:
Both of these children are products of a country where chess is still largely an extracurricular afterthought. Figures suggest that fewer than one in ten pupils in state schools currently get access to chess at school, placing them at a disadvantage compared with privately-educated peers. Which raises an obvious question about what Britain — and every other country — might be leaving on the table.
What's not in dispute: the 2026 championships were the biggest in the event's 122-year history, with more than 1,750 entries and a record £34,000 prize fund for the open championship. Sivanandan's 2026 title completed a hat-trick of honours for her in British chess events. Royal won his first overall British Championship title at 17, finishing half a point ahead of grandmasters Luke McShane and Michael Adams, a nine-time British champion.
What is in dispute: whether the talent these two represent is an argument for putting chess inside the school day for every child, or whether mandatory inclusion would do more harm than good.
On one side, the case for the classroom is built on both data and intuition. A meta-analysis covering 24 studies found that chess appears to enhance primary and middle school students' achievement in mathematics and overall cognitive ability. In countries like Armenia, where chess is a mandatory school subject, educators have reported notable improvements in students' math and logical reasoning skills. The European Parliament has expressed a favourable opinion on using chess courses in schools as an educational tool, and the Spanish Parliament has approved the implementation of chess courses during school hours. Proponents argue that Sivanandan's own origin story — a chess board gifted by a family friend during a pandemic lockdown — is precisely why access cannot be left to chance.
On the other, the research is messier than the advocates admit. Convincing experimental evidence of the effectiveness of chess instruction is still lacking. Placebo effects cannot be ruled out, because almost none of the experiments in the field were designed with active control groups. Some researchers have concluded that compulsory scholastic chess instruction may engender motivational problems among students — the very enthusiasm that makes chess work as a voluntary pursuit could evaporate the moment it becomes homework. Skeptics say the stories of Royal and Sivanandan prove that exceptional talent finds a way regardless, and that crowding an already stretched curriculum with a game solves nothing for the average pupil.
Which leaves the question that actually matters, and the one no championship result can answer for you:
Is the rise of chess prodigies like Bodhana Sivanandan and Shreyas Royal a sign that chess belongs in every classroom as a right — or is it proof that the game works precisely because it isn't forced?
The field is genuinely split. We dropped the question into the Arena and let the models argue it out. Watch below.