Ficheall 2025/2026

Ficheall.ie is the national network of primary teachers promoting chess in their schools for the social and cognitive benefits it has for primary school students. Ficheall teachers use chess as a tool to teach through and an opportunity for their students to develop new skills and values, as well as representing their school at Ficheall tournaments called Féile Fichille (chess festival).

The Ficheall.ie website contains many excellent resources created by fellow primary school teachers such as:

• A series of 10 beginner chess lessons (with optional integration to the SPHE curriculum)
• List of CPD chess courses for teachers (summer, evening and online courses)
• Chess numeracy puzzles
• Ficheall newsletters with chess updates
• Online Teacher Chess Club

Ficheall Summer Course

Cork Education Support Centre have hosted the Chess for Social Skills summer course previously with great success. Upon completion of this course teachers can play chess (most attend the course having never played chess before) and can teach the basics of chess to students in their class while also teaching key SPHE curriculum objectives from 1st to 6th class (all of this without worksheets).

Féile Fichille Chess Tournaments

Féile Fichille tournaments are non-competitive chess tournaments organised annually in Term 2. No medals, prizes or trophies are presented. Instead, the day is a celebration of the students learning chess and social skills as well as their teachers’ leadership skills to introduce the initiative in their school. For many students it is their first opportunity to wear their school jersey and represent their school. More details about Féile Fichille Tournaments can be found here (including a checklist to ensure students are ready for the Féile Fichille)

Féile Fichille Timeline

• September: Registrations Open
• October: Registrations Close
• November: Schools informed of tournament date and venue
• January/ February/ March: Féile Fichille tournament will be scheduled in term 2. Registered schools will be allocated one Féile Fichille tournament to attend. Schools are required to be at the venue at 9.30am with the event concluded by 2pm

Contact Us

If you have any queries regarding the Féile Fichille Tournaments please contact Ficheall using the Contact Us link here.

The Learning School Project has been a very successful collaborative project for the past number of years between Cork Education Support Centre and Limerick Education Centre.  Many schools have benefitted from participation in this project and we would again like to invite schools to get involved in the latest LSP project - LSP 13.  Schools will be supported by a number of webinars/hub meetings which will take place in person in CESC and LEC but will also be available via Zoom.  

We invite you to participate in this year’s cycle of the Learning School Project - LSP-13.  The framework for this project is the development of the school as a self-evaluating school, which is a key element of current national policy with particular reference to Looking at Our School (LAOS) and School Self-Evaluation (SSE).  Participation in LSP-13 will offer your school an opportunity to explore LAOS and decide on an aspect of the Teaching and Learning Dimension to focus on in terms of SSE, school development and school improvement.  Schools that have participated in the Learning School Project over the years have benefitted hugely from their own individual, context-based innovation and development and from their participation in the LSP Community of Practice.

To register please email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

1st Hub meeting on September 19th 2022

Dr Joe O’Connell will facilitate our first session 

The BLAST residency in St. Marys School in Rochestown was led by artist, Carol Healy.

The theme of this project was Visual Art with a particular focus on Land Art.

All of the artwork was created outdoors and then documented and preserved using photography.

Each photo was mounted on foam board to give a floating effect. The centre photo represents growth which is something the students were learning about at the time of this project.

The students also used watercolours and Chinese ink to create artwork which was then incorporated into a stack of mounted circular drawings to be displayed in the school.

Nathalia de Azevedo Marques was the artist-in-residence for the BLAST project in Scoil Íosagáin Infant School, Mallow.

Nathalia worked alongside Ms. Guerin and the girls and boys of Junior and Senior Infants.

The theme of the residency was drama.

Nathalia introduced many fun games for the children to play where they interacted with each other in a creative manner with the support of the adults around them.

The children also created stories and performed them for each other.