To think D of E is a massive swindle

£250?! My son is doing bronze DofE with school and it is £70 for the whole thing. He just needs his own kit. What're you getting fir all that money?

Both mine are doing/have done dofe and thru have to plan their meals as a group. Things like pasta, beans, Swiss roll and custard. Cooking outdoors is a part of it too.

My son hated the Wayfare food in sachets. I sent pitta bread, sandwich fillers, chocolate brioche, pasta and pour over sauce, porridge in pot and then snack bars. He had plenty to eat. I do agree though it is a very expensive experience. It seems to be a money making exercise. The organisers lent my son a rucksack as his was too small ( though I ordered the size they recommended). Good luck

Schools seem to make it very expensive.

I did mine with Guides, camped in a field and borrowed what we didn't already own.

DCs did theirs with cCadets. Cost was less than £50 and the only kit we provided was boots.

FWIW, they have to "cook" so no instant noodles, but that doesn't mean they need camping meals. Ds1 took bacon and DS2 took hot dog sausages. If they've been asked for meals, that's the school, not the scheme.

My daughter they decided between them what to take. She said her dried apricots saved her - mini energy boosts! But you're right - major outlay fir equipment and my son did CCF instead and didn't have to pay for anything!

GasPanic
I think it's fairly clear from my post why pot noodles are an issue on DofE, even if i was flippant in my expression, which wasn't fair of me.

Students need to be fuelled properly for the expeditions to be safe.

Pot noodles, junk food, large amounts of sweets, energy drinks and other poor food choices aren't good ideas because they're not really offering much to the students for the activity they're doing.

Foods that take up a lot of space, haven't got the required nutritional value and are highly unlikely to sustain a teenager on several days of expedition are unlikely to be viewed positively by staff teams.

That's why some providers will suggest boil in the bag meals because it's easier for them.

To add - our kit did however meal plan and split the costs. No pot noodles was the advice because they’re bulky! But whatever else they wanted that would give them the needed energy.

It’s sad that it costs that much ambit I’m guessing it’s that or the school can’t run it.
I used to organise the DodE at the school I taught at for a few years; the two teachers who ran it before me both didn’t want to continue and no other members of staff would do it. I have a physical health condition that prevented me doing the expeditions as I explained when I was being pressed to pick it up but no one else would even do any of it so it was that or drop the scheme and 100-ish students part way through would have to find another provider to finish it. So we had to resort to an outside company who charged this sort of amount for expeditions as there was no other way. I had to arrange it all and oversee all the other sections of the scheme and sign all the activities off.
its great when teachers can volunteer but they are already so overworked with other expectations on their free time that I don’t blame my colleagues for not wanting to give up more weekends to do this.

WTF? We paid £40 and everyone had a bin bag and planning the meals was part of the challenge. What is the point if they have it all provided like some weird sleepover 😂

Pot noodles aren't empty calories at all.

Here is the nutritional information extract :

Pot Noodle Original Curry
Noodles in an Original Curry flavour sauce with vegetables and a little sachet of Sweet Mango Chutney.
Nutritional information
Typical values as prepared per 100g per POT* % per POT**
Energy 145 kcal 442 kcal 22%
Fat 5.4 g 16 g 23%
Fat of which saturates 2.6 g 7.9 g 40%
Carbohydrate 21 g 64 g 25%
Carbohydrate of which sugars 2 g 6.1 g 7%
Fibre 1.2 g 3.7 g 0%
Protein 2.8 g 8.5 g 17%
Salt 0.48 g 1.5 g 25%
Reference Intake

• % of Reference Intake of an average adult (8400kj/2000kcal) ** Pot makes up to 305g after preparation with water = 1 portion

You can argue they are unhealthy. You can argue they are difficult to eat without water (as a pp said). You can argue that they don't contain enough simple carbohydrates for an instant energy boost (but then a lot of foods that people would claim are "substantial" don't), you can get that just from buying some low cost dex tablets or mars bars if you are into chocolate.

What you can't argue is that they are "empty calories". Because there is just no science behind that.

This is absolutely why pot noodles are not suitable. They don't have the correct calorific or food group values for the level of exercise on expedition days.

It was even worse for us as we paid up, then bought all the stuff at quite some expense - sleeping bag, massive rucksack, walking boots, waterproof trousers, new waterproof and warm coat.

Cost a bomb.

Our beloved cat died the night before the trip. DD was devastated and didn't go. 😳 Didn't get the award. Must have spent about £500 in all. 🤯

When dd2 came to it, she didn't even fancy it so the stuff didn't even get used. I'm thinking - travelling? 🤔

I agree if run by a private company like at our school, join scouts, much cheaper

I think that's just your school. I didn't pay anything to do mine, just campsite fees, we got a taxi one way to a start and that was a fiver. We did meal plan together and each took bits. We didn't use sachets but used easy to cook food. One of the girls went to New Zealand for her gold and I don't think that was much more than £250. Perhaps ask the school for a breakdown of what that is paying for.

That's pricey! We paid £70 they camped at school and school lent tents rucksacks sleeping bags, bedrolls and stoves free of charge. Also we were reccomended to use bingbags as liners! Your school sounds so ridiculous and ott!

As ever on these - anyone complaining about costs had better be doing a lot of volunteering themselves Baby Groups, Sports, Brownies, Scout , PTAs all of these survive on people giving up hours of their time. I have always volunteered a lot alongside a full-time job and kids and it's soul-destroying when people won't give up an hour of their time to help out or complain about activities. They are the same people who complain about the costs when these are inevitably passed to private companies.

DoE through schools are expensive. I did mine through Scouts. So did my boys. No weird rules like no bin bags, no pot noodles etc

Independence and planning is part of it, but as staff we also have a duty of care.

Having half a dozen students out for hours longer and carrying additional kit, not because of an emergency, but because one person decided to skip breakfast, eat all their sweet, have a pot noodle for tea before hardly eating anything the next day isn't a fair situation on the team. That isn't about learning from mistakes. It's one teen being selfish and/or irresponsible and putting a large burden on their team.

Now Bronze is available to Year 9 pupils the level of maturity, in my opinion, is overall lower. Parental expectations of DofE have also changed over the years in my experience. The level of mollycoddling that's expected has increased, which correlates with an increase in students who've had limited independent outdoor time.

The funniest complaint I've known a colleague receive was that their child's feet were tired when they got home so could the next walk be shorter.

Just to add be careful to get the chorizo that doesn't need to be kept in a fridge, if they are doing a summer expedition food safety is important as by day 4 food that needs refrigeration will be pretty ripe.

GS doing gold and I don't know about a chorizo, he wants 4. I'm pretty sure he will eat them plus his pasta and breakfast bars. I think gold expedition is 5 days, maybe 4, so a strapping 6ft 18 year old will probably eat his own weight in chorizo if given a chance.

I thought the whole point was independence and planning. The implications being that they also need to learn from their own mistakes?

I know there have been rescues from Dartmoor over the years when the weather has turned bad, but the groups I see out around Surrey are rarely more than 2 miles from a shop, or half a mile from a house, so its not exactly the wilderness.

GasPanic
The issue with pot noodles and other fairly empty calorie food is that the students doing Duke of Edinburgh have very different fitness levels and most don't have a good enough understanding of how to fuel for an expedition when they start.

Some groups, like mine, run a session on expedition preparation, meal planning, how to pack effectively etc. Others will suggest standard boil in the bag meals because it's easier. Students not fuelling properly can easily become a safety issue.

I've had situations where students not eating properly has caused (in no particular order) huge problems for their group in terms of morale and pace, the student themselves has become unwell or upset due to lacking in energy, the group has ended up using their emergency rations to get the sugar level up because one of their group has been irresponsible with their food intake, the group pace has slowed so they were very late into camp on an evening because one person was exhausted, other members of the groups have filled their rucksacks heavier to lighten the load of the group member who hasn't eaten properly.
The psychological and physical load it places on the team when one student doesn't bother to take responsibility for their own food is upsetting to see as a member of staff. When other groups come into camp excited, the group affected by a peer being irresponsible usually trudge in late and need a huge amount of TLC and encouragement from staff to help boost their confidence.

That's before the implications of staffing having to respond to these situations, which could have been avoided.

I can understand why getting an external business to organise/supervise must be expensive. The insurance must be horrific.

Don't see the problem with pot noodles, I've lived for a week off them in the past, I'm sure someone younger would survive it, so long as it's not Beef and Onion.

It's just price gorging.

LEAs are becoming a thing of the past, of course. Nearly all the schools around me are not LEA.

I'm no longer teaching, and though I miss the job in many ways, I'm relieved not to be. There is very little room, timewise or financially to do these 'extras'. I'm very glad that my DDs had the opportunity to do DofE (though even back then, a couple of decades ago, rucksacks weren't provided by the school) and that their teachers were not so totally overworked, and had time and headspace to volunteer for the amount of work (much of it behind the scenes) that running the scheme needs.
I can quite understand them asking an outside agency to run it, rather than the school not have it available to pupils at all.

LEAs used to have kit stores that schools could borrow kit from as well.