Bronze DofE £250 through school

Blimey Very, that's a bit harsh. If you've done Gold, it is one hell of a commitment & only 10k of people a year manage to achieve it, I believe. DS has nearly completed & it is an 18 month commitment, involving being out in what's called wild country for 5 days, being entirely self-sufficient. Only one other boy at his school did it, so it was hardly a case of doing it, just because everyone else did it. I think you are being dismissive of a huge commitment by a young person, in addition to A levels.

I'm gobsmacked at companies charging £250 per head to deliver bronze. I would be getting in touch with the DofE organisation through the website if that was the case at my DCs school.

Our Scouts does it but only as a region rather than as an individual group. The scout awards sort of mirror it. DSs get a scouting award for completing each section plus a few extra bits. Again, keep in mind that these people are also volunteers and people should join scouts because they want to be scouts rather than just seeing it as a way to get dofe cheaper. Having said that I'd recommend anyone to get involved in scouts its a brilliant organisation.

My oldest did his Gold Scout award last year which is roughly equivalent to D of E bronze. The expedition bit was a "supported expedition" which meant that although the boys did everything themselves in terms of planning, navigating, hiking and cooking, there was a leader checking in with them overnight. Cost wise, he had most of the gear already as he regularly goes camping with Scouts so had things like boots and waterproof trousers.

I think £250 is outrageous but it's a HUGE committment for teachers to try to see kids through their D of E and if there are no volunteers or anyone who is appropriately trained, and there is demand from the children, then the only option is to get in an external company to guide them through the course.

I also think joining Explorers purely to get D of E on the sly is cheeky fucker territrory. Scouts/Guides etc is also run purely by volunteers and many of the Explorers will have gone through the whole Beavers, Cubs and Scouts system before reaching Explorers. Expecting volunteer leaders to take on youngsters who have shown zero interest in Scouting just to do their D of E is not on. Also, Scouting subs are at least £100 a year and you'll have to provide your equipment, and that's assuming you can find an Explorers' group which is not bursting at the seams and desperate for volunteer helpers in hte first place.

Can't you do it through Scouting. I am pretty sure that a lot of it marries up and that the final Scout senior award is at leas equivalent. We also don't charge! (I am a new Beaver scout leader so not an expert in what the bigger kids do but it might be worth looking into it!)

Even if it's functionally useless for CVs or whatever, I'm still glad DS has done it. We are an entirely urban family, don't even have a garden, and DS has really, really enjoyed both the process and the expeditions. He's also expanded his social group at school, which has been really good for him.

Yes we could afford to help our DS to do it but not without sacrificing other things so we don't just have money to burn.

I'm not sure why the school isn't allowing parents to run it. There are staff involved too and all parentscare appropriately checked and trained. Most equipment can be borrowed from stocks except boots. As i say if walking was chosen for the expedition it's certainly more affordable but only because of parents and staff giving up their time. DS1 has just finished gold and DS2 has just finished silver. There were about 100 doing bronze, about 50 doing silver and 20 odd did gold.

A long time ago, the teacher responsible for d of e at our school went on long term sick. Myself and a friend were in upper 6th (so over 18) and ended up running the unit for our gold award service bit. LA was the operating authority though. I carried on doing it in my first year at uni too. Never charged more than a fiver on top of the advertised fees.

Re volunteering for D of E. DD is a young leader at Brownies, and has been for a year. The Brownie leader gets a little fed up with the D of E volunteers who do their 3 month stint and then stop once they have that box ticked. DD's friend who also helps is doing D of E, but was already a volunteer. They both get a lot out of it and it has done a lot for DD's confidence.

DofE and suchlike have just become a middle class marker, and don’t really differentiate between candidates. Not having it doesn’t mean you’re not capable of kayaking up K2 or working with the community. Candidates from backgrounds which don’t traditionally send children to university usually don’t have the opportunity to do DofE, or the money, or they’re working a real job to earn some cash. Ethnic minorities are also far less likely to do DofE. And many schools do so much hand holding for DofE it’s hardly a challenge.

When I was doing interviews, I was looking for someone I would enjoy teaching for 3 years. If they’ve gotten as far as interview, their ability to cope with the academic content of the course is probably a given. Many people with DofE have done it just because everyone else does it, and it certainly doesn’t stand out in a personal statement. I’d far rather see some thing a bit different, like you’re the under 18 world champion at unicycle ping pong - it’s a great starting point for discussion and generally means that the candidate has something about them. I might arrange for a unicycle and a table tennis bat to be at interview though, just to check I look for something that suggest the candidate hasn’t just trodden a path because they’ve been dropped on it.

£30 here through scouts or £90 through school.

Do ncs instead then.

It's a great thing for the kids to do, and, a real achievement.

Our school offers it to 60 kids and names are pulled out a hat. £90 and we supply the kit.

DD's really keen. There's loads of reasons for doing it other than uni applications, it's exercise, teamwork, safety, skills, budgeting, being reliable and fun. Glad she's doing it. Specially as it's £90 and not some of the prices you guys are talking about.

Does your local youth service have a dofe group? Ours has done for years (well since before I did it many years ago.) and they keep the cost to a bare minimum. it is only over the last few years that schools have started providing it in my area.

According to staff at open days. It's not about stating what you've done it's about saying what you gained from that and why its relevant. So to use titchy,s example, you could say that you volunteered at the cat sanctuary for dofe and that you learned about the importance of structure and organisation and resposibility that it's made you get on and gets things done even when you may not have wanted to or something like that.

@Allgoodfun unis don't care about either d of e or ncs. They care about hobbies directly related to their course.
However employers post uni do care about stuff like that. It enables the student to have examples of times when they have been under pressure, led a team, something went wrong how did they cope, interpersonal. Skills, working in a team etc.
So it is still worth doing.

My son has just signed up through school, it's £95 which includes weekly training meetings, a weekend away training and the expedition itself. Plus travel costs etc. All the kit will be needed. Although he does scouts so has a lot anyway. X

It's the Operating Authority issue as well - I'm sure ours isn't the only LEA who can no longer authorise schools to run the award.

I'm pretty sure it was less than £50 for DS to do it last year I think it was £20 or thereabouts. The school provided the rucksacks and we got the rest.