Bronze DofE £250 through school

A company can't run the whole DofE, it can only do the expedition. Skills, volunteering and activity sections are all done by the child themselves. That sounds very high at £250 per child for a Bronze expedition. This is basically a two day walk with a rucksack in local countryside. What are the company doing for that? If 30 kids are doing the DofE, that's £7,500 in their pockets!

Do national citizens service instead is £50

My DDs school are in a similar position. In the past DofE was organised by staff and was not that expensive. Then last year they brought in an external company to run the expedition side of it and that has lead to a similar racking up of the costs.

I decided that my dds would not do it, partly because it is so expensive and partly because it is now becoming just a box to tick on the university form. I went to the presentation and the teacher explained that they had structured it to minimise the amount of time the participants spent - ie do clubs at school to cover the skill/fitness and volunteer at lunchtime in the school library. It seemed so against the spirit of the award.

I was also amazed how many girls dropped out half way through! not at that price unless your leg has dropped off!

Join an explorer scout group intstead and do the equivalent awards there? There's 3 awards, up to the Queen's Scout award which is equivalent to DOE gold and is more challenging and more fun in my experience.

At my DD's independent school it costs about the same. I was shocked when I found out a friends state school only charged £50!

It is because the school pay a company to come in and run it for them. One of my DDs was ill on the final expedition with a stomach bug and we had to go and pick her up in the middle of the night. Then we had to pay another £230 pounds for her to redo it the following year!

Is there any way it could be done not through school? My son did Silver & Gold with a group of friends but not through school, as their school didn't offer it beyond Bronze. I can't remember it costing very much. I have a feeling it was organised by the local authority.

As for all the kit - you should be able to source most if not all of the kit via places like ebay.

It really is worth doing especially if they keep going through the stages. My son was told by various Universities and his now employer that they value it on a CV.

If the school aren't providing anything, what is the £250 for? Have you asked?

I borrowed pretty much all kit for my DCs, apart from the walking boots, so don't let the kit put you off. At Bronze they should only be out for two days and one night in normal kind of countryside, so they don't need the same kind of kit they would do at Gold.

That's crazy - I never did DofE in the end (did plain Outward Bound instead) but we were told to fundraise for kit , costs or ask around. It was seen as part of the challenge, to organzie your own kit and food etc and to work as a team tinmake sure everything was taken . I presume the £250 means the school provides everything, seems daft.

If you want a cheaper option Scouts or Girlguiding offer DofE as well , alongside a lot of similar stuff. Prices were often a tenth of that as onus was placed on us to do fund-raising rather than rely on mum and dad.

Can you ask the school why it costs this much? To buy the place from DofE isn't that much, about £20 I think, so what is it the school is having to do that costs £230 per child doing it?