To think D of E is a massive swindle

My son is doing his at the moment and it's been brilliant! Most equipment included, and school did a free trial run. They've encouraged noodles and porridge pots as meals too. Sounds like you got a crappy experience, but I'm really impressed with ours.

the bits of equipment he did need (they said on ours to take liners or carrier bags happily !). Managed to get second hand on marketplace and Vinted.

DS is currently out on Gold. The school accepts donations of equipment and provides everything, even the walking socks if you want. We have had to pay £100 for Gold. Free School Meals kids don’t have to pay, there is a hardship fund to cover the £100 and I really like that it gives everyone a chance to do it if they would like to.

It has been absolutely worth it for him, in terms of confidence and achieveing things he didn’t think possible.

I realise we have been very lucky with the school and their support though.

One has to remember though it is unreasonable for those trying to help the students to suggest what they should bring to eat, thus reducing the size and weight of their packs.

you are fabulous 😀

And I hope someone tells you this often

thank you

One of mine did theirs through Scouts and it cost £20 and another through Air Cadets for free. £250 seems massively expensive.

oh and they were allowed a bin liner 😁

I’ve come to the conclusion that DofE is absolutely stupid. We live next to a regular D of E campsite and I often see kids with rucksacks bigger than them struggling around the valley in baking hot weather looking totally unprepared. I had a smaller rucksack when I went to Europe for a whole summer! I’ve never seen a walker on the pennine way carrying as much. There’s nothing going to put kids off the countryside/camping than D of E!

Microwave rice, can be fried or warmed in a pan ( had to tell my sister when she said there would be no microwaves)
You can get a mattesons smoked sausage that isn’t refrigerated, but has to be once opened ( eat it all) Lots of vege meals you used to add just boiling water
But agreed all the equipment is damned expensive

My son completed the Bronze last year in year 10 and cooked pasta for the evening meal. He's just completed his Silver expedition last week after finishing his GCSEs and they cooked hot dogs and pasta again. I think each time it was about £50 so £250 sounds quite excessive!

Can't really vote, as YABVU to think DofE is a massive swindle, but YANBU to think this company that your school has brought in is.

DofE done properly is great.
Join guides or Scouts or cadets and do it properly, in the spirit in which it was set up.

I think we charge about £60 for gold!! Ask and query it via the governors £250 is too much so ask for a breakdown and if they feel it is accessible to most parents?

my daughter was FSM and did it for free

Assume they are providing tent etc

borrow a rucksack, and walking boots although mine have walking boots anyway - same with waterproof trousers borrow borrow borrow

rubble sacks are great

meals from blacks are so much better and believe me after 8-10 hours walking they want and need them

for me as a teacher, please appreciate the 2 nights I spend away from my family camping in a tent in wales - in the cold, to look after yours - I don’t get paid for it, I do it because I want to help. I’m nearly 50 and ache all over after. Ours have us, minibus there and back, we are armed up to the nines with flares, first aid kits, gps trackers, maps, decent facilities in our campsites eg showers with heated floors etc and a decent proper tent - I don’t sleep as normally I get woken up as someone doesn’t feel well, is cold, wet, or missing home. The maximum amount of sleep I normally get is 2 hours and I’m hiking with yours and keeping them laughing etc

Pot noodles are not very nutritious, the contents is not what it was when they 1st came on the market, & they are very salty which could lead to bad dehydration if over consumed.
Processed food has drastically changed since I was a student 20years ago😬

The reason it is so expensive is because the school get an external company to run it and they make a fat profit. My son did his bronze through school and we paid around £250 and then he had the option to do silver through the army cadets and they only charged £40. Doing it through the school makes it unreachable for alot of students.

I was told by a teacher when she saw DS walking shoes that he had to have a pair of walking boots, NOT walking shoes (which he wore a lot) as needed ankle support.

Cost me £50 as DS was a size 9. He wore them once on the DofE weekend which was local and flat so no ankle support needed at all. He never wore them again as you don’t usually use walking boots on a daily basis.

Was annoyed to say the least.

All these extra-curricular experiences that children used to get as part of their school life are disappearing. If they haven't disappeared entirely they're no longer free or cheap, because outside providers are needed to run them, school staff can't. School staff can't because they're so short staffed it's a struggle just to stay on top of delivering the curriculum, there's no capacity for the extras. When all your planning and prep time has been taken by covering lessons, or setting and marking work for cover teachers, you don't really have the energy to go camping for a weekend, supervising 30 teenagers. That's if you even have time, the work you'd have been doing in that lost planning and prep time has to be done sometime, so it's done at the weekend. Or you work in a pub at the weekend because if you don't you can't pay your rent, and as the school aren't paying you for your time camping, you can't afford to miss those shifts in the pub. The Tories well and truly sucked the joy out of school life, in myriad ways.

YANBU

That's insane.

Yes it sounds like you had a bad deal. Ours was £110. We already had a rucksack and sleeping bag and as walkers she had shoes. We definitely used a bin liner and she ate mainly protein bars 🤣. I'm grateful to the staff for giving up their time for this

Its cheeky. I wouldnt bother. Unless your child really wants to do it. Just another way to screw money out of the aspirational middle classes always looking for a way to give their child a leg up. A clear case of fomo.

Cost me £30 for dd 9 years ago now admittedly, they could take whatever food they liked but they needed to supply gear except tents and stoves

I loved it in the 90s and used the giant rucksack for YEARS! Doing things costs money if you don’t have the equipment!

If you think that’s bad, one of my children is in Pony Club and we must be about five figures into that 🤣

That's lovely. It made me tear up actually, don't really know why. What an amazing thing you do.

Oh and dd’s rucksack was £50 second hand.

@caringcarer Bless him. He sounds lovely. This is exactly my dd’s experience. She’s strong and super fit. One girl was struggling so dd took as much as would fit in her rucksack to lighten the load.

As for food, it isn’t cheap tbh. But I wouldn’t buy those sachets. Dd took pasta and someone took pasta sauce. You can get the 2 person pots cheaply. The boys did the same and everyone had had enough fuel in the day not to need a high calorie dinner.

Dd took the same for each day -

• Pepperami sausages
• Biscoffe paste sandwiches
• kendal mint cake
• flapjacks - various flavours to stave boredom
• raisins
• baby purée pouch but you could send an apple instead
• Dried mango
• pain au chocolat
• Choc chip brioche
• Belvita
• pasta (friend supplied the sauce)
• hot chocolate sachet - optional for bronze but with silver (dd just done silver) you need to cook in the morning
• sweets to share

As for plastic bags, the first time I forgot to buy bags but luckily I keep the the large, thick delivery bags from online ordering and we had enough. Her friend took paper plates btw.

Something I don't understand is, if parents don't want to pay £250 for DofE, but would like their children to do it, why don't they volunteer to organise it?

If your child is old enough to be doing DofE, they are old enough to be doing some work (odd jobs, paper round, dog walking etc.) to raise the money needed, either beforehand or to pay you back. DofE is meant to be about developing skills and character, after all. It sounds as though a commercial company is needed to run it as in this instance there aren't the volunteers or resources at the school to run it.