To think D of E is a massive swindle

No need to be a scout to get a discount at Go Outdoors.

https://www.dofe.org/shopping/card/participants/

Rubble bags are perfectly fine. We paid nearer 500 for d of e. Shocking

£50 for mine all in inc minibus and all equipment. They took pasta and stuff from here. Loved it.
£500 for my friend’s DD…
too much profiteering for sure!

I think I may have got my silver award under false pretenses. It was a few years ago but we stayed in youth hostels and on the last day we had a pub lunch with our teachers. It was a very cheap and pleasant few days.

If you have to get stuff from Go Outdoors see if you borrow a scout as our local one offeres discounts to scouts so get them to 'buy' the tuff you need.

Mine took big bags and rice supermarket meals, porridge, pasta and sauce. They meal planned. Pot noddles were not banned.

These costs have really surprised me. DS did his bronze award this year, teachers in school run it. He had all the kit anyway because he’s an Explorer Scout, and then all I paid for was food for his expedition.

My Foster son has a learning disability and did Bronze and Silver awards. He is actually very fit and sporty. I was a bit worried but I was told he was a very strong team member and he could do his Gold if he wanted to.

DS did his bronze and now his silver with scouts. There was a registration fee each time £25 ish and the bronze expedition was £30 which included food which they bought and planned themselves. They had pot noodles as a hot lunch then made a proper pasta dinner in the evening. All the shared kit came from the scouts included in the price, and all the person kit has been used multiple times since on normal camp trips/hikes.

So expensive. DS has just completed bronze and it was £60.

Indeed there is and the Ambassador programme is excellent.

https://www.dofe.org/access-without-limits-funding/

Mine took pasta and packer sauces And used rubble sacks. No cost beyond the expedition expenses, tebts , rucksacks etc were borrowed from the scheme.

You have to pay? I did Bronze, Silver and Gold and we never paid anything and nobody dictated what kit or meals we had to take. Times have changed I guess from 25 years ago. In my opinion the whole thing was a vast waste of time and of no practical use at all.

That is a lot more than what mine have spent.
there is support from dofe towards the costs. I know this as my daughter is a. Ambassador and has raised money to help others.

parkrun is free to participate in, weekly so that's the physical sorted.
Volunteering at junior parkrun is also free and exceedingly useful.
Learning a language on duolingo is also free.

If a student doesn't have the admin skills to record what they do each week, then its probably a good time for them to learn them.

Aye, it was an expensive thing for my kids to hate every minute!

We offer d of E at school and it’s all included in the cost and MUCH lower in price than that.

Try your local army surplus store, they'll be able to kit dc out with good quality kit at reasonable prices. They'll probably be used to D of E participants & will know what is needed.

All this discussion about meal planning has taken me back (and back ...) to when I did Bronze / started Silver. I think it was the bronze walk when I was in the middle of an elimination diet for allergy testing - the teacher supervising was horrified by what I was taking (pikelets made with rice flour and egg, minced lamb with rice, lettuce, and ... not much else IIRC). But I felt so much better than I had ever done before. I must have done another walk after that, when the teacher had extolled the usefulness of pita breads so our group had brought some to try. I'd told them I wouldn't be having any, I'd be bringing my own food, but they still brought one for me and then complained how heavy they were to carry when I said, I can't eat wheat I'll be ill if I eat them so no thanks!

I agree with what should be a level playing field is being made a cash cow. Very unfair.
I remember those Wayfarer meals and them being expensive when I did it, but I don't see why they have to be obligatory. Insist on nutrition, yes but it doesn't have to be that branded stuff.
Could some of the money be insurance?

Best thing I did as a teenager. And was massively beneficial for the degree I chose afterwards.

Also on the meals front - Wayfarer meals are more expensive but nutritionally balanced vs pot noodles which are cheaper but most certainly not.

I can understand that times are tough and extra funds are a problem but the benefits are much more wide reaching.

(my mother would disagree - she hated that I did DoE and didn’t understand the appeal. I got a massive amount from it - not least being the fuck away from her. She thought it was expensive 20 years ago - and had no appreciation that I then went on to use the boots/kit etc for the next 7 years because I knew what degree I was going for.)

Its not a swizz, it’s a training exercise. Some kids will grow from it, some not so much. Down to your kid which it is.

What a waste of time.

And not sure that's really so different to exam fraud.

Dc has just done silver and it cost me £50, that was mainly for mini bus hire to get them to where they were going. Your school sounds nuts, is it private?
They were also told that meal planning in their groups of 2s or 3s was part of the award. It helped the weight of their bags too as they bought the food then split it over the 3 of them, no duplication.
Having parents buy it for them isn't really the point!