Bronze DofE £250 through school

[Allgoodfun]

DC has brought home the information to do bronze DofE, which school have offered for many years. However this year the price has suddenly rocketed from roughly £30 to £250. On top of that would be all the kit needed for the expedition - waterproofs, boots, sleeping bag etc.
Firstly, is this the normal cost now?
Secondly and more importantly to me, AIBU to think it's ruining the point of the DofE, instead of being open to everyone and so worth having on your CV, is it going to be yet another case of those who can afford it do and those who can't don't so meaningless to future employers/ universities etc?
Regular but nc incase it's only our school charging this amount

My daughters school it cost £35. School provided tents, cooking stoves, rucksack. We bought boots, decent sleeping bag and waterproofs. 2 teachers ran it. Daughter did 2 overnight Giles, one as a practice! They were 2 weeks apart so she could get a bit of rest. She loved it, was knackered as she walked a long way with all the lit. She learnt to map read and says the night the kids set up camp indepemdently; teachers nearby if needed, was one of her best experiences so far. I guess we are lucky her state school invested in the equipment which means children from poorer families can enjoy this great experience. The teachers have up their time too which means for £35 my daughter learnt so much about her self and her confidence as well as other skills. £250 plus equipment is very prohibitive to some families. Could the school not invest in some equipment or borrow/share with another school?

*hikes not Giles- hate predictive text!

We would be interested as we want our students to be active citizens - but the PS would have to demonstrate what they learnt from it. Individual initiative would be even better.
But UCAS form should not be the reason for doing it! When my DC did it - out of own interest - it was deeply uncool at their school (such that they hid the fact they were doing it from their friends :( )which I thought was a shame

Went to a D of E meeting last night at DD's school. I can't remember how much the Bronze cost but the cost for Silver was £400. The expedition part is run by an outside agency which is the expensive part.

DD is doing it because she loved doing the Bronze and wants to do the Silver now. Doing ANYTHING that you don't want to do just for personal statements is an error IMO. Some of them have done the Bronze expeditions but never got the sign off for everything else because they're not really interested. Complete waste of time and money.

your local schools offering it for less than £250 just means they are lucky enough to still have teachers prepared to do the work for free
Pretty much.
But as workload and stress etc goes up, teachers drop extra curriculars. It's sad but true.

There's a team of teachers who do DofE at my school plus more who help on the walks. We buy the tents, stoves etc out of thr fee. We also have to sort an assessor to come out.

Some schools have to pay a company to run it so have all thr staff costs and a stupid amount of profit. I'm sure long term it wpuld be cheaper to lighten teacher loads and have them do it for free

Buying walking boots, outdoor clothing abd a rucksack is normal though.

If they go to GoOutdoors and show their DofE card they get extra money off.

Thanks for all your comments. We spoke about it last night and DS will decide after the meeting.
He's already had 2 friends who wanted to do it saying they can't now because of the cost, which is sad and illustrates my point, will DS in theory "look better" than his friend who on paper had the same opportunity but in reality couldn't take it up due to family finance?
I agree with pp comments that he shouldn't do it just to look good on his CV and have talked to him about that and that he needs to do it for the right reasons.

DDs's Bronze last year was £100 through school, but I know the staff volunteer their time (apart from the stage leaders, who get off-timetable time for the organisation). Last year there were around 180 DC doing bronze, so a LOT of staff volunteer time .

IME, DofE is totally irrelevant for uni applications (neither DD1 or DD2 mentioned it in their applications, and both had almost passed Gold at that point), BUT, it was the second reason why DD1 got her first graduate job - she and her interviewer (now boss) bonded over hill walking and nice stationery. She was able to say she'd learned through the different sections though. (top reason was academic grades for anyone who was wondering, the DofE just showed she could fit in with the team).

Via cadets we change £23 for a Bronze enrolment and about £10 for the practice and qualifying expedition together. £250 sounds expensive but if the school need to hire in assessors and supervisors for the expeditions it adds up.

The reason it is cheap with the cadets is presumably because the MOD is subsiding the group.
Not as such. I mean they do, but the simple reason is that DofE itself only costs the £23 enrolment fee, and we have our own supervisors and assessors. The MOD don't pay money for DofE.

Our Silver is £90!!

NRTFT however, I have been landed with coordinating Bronze this year. We use an outside company to provide training, practice and qualifying expeditions. They provide all equipment and enough adults who are all DBS-checked. The cost per entrant is £150. I have 80 kids who have signed up to do it and simply cannot cope with any more.

If I had to run it, the cost would be a lot less however, people would have to buy tents and trangias as well as fuel and whatever else they need. I would have to find volunteers to staff it, get them trained and DBS-checked. I don't have the time or expertise to do it.

Yes, other groups can do it a lot more cheaply and I have told several parents of other providers when they queried the cost. Funnily enough, they have decided that the convenience of doing it through school outweighs the cost and all have signed their kids up...

I'd honestly kick up a fuss about this. Local paper?

It's really shitty. Award which is set up in order to allow children of all abilities to do something really worthwhile is underfunded by council, gets outsourced - BINGO, costs go up and so poorer kids miss out while private company finds a new way to cream profits for little.

I'd honestly kick up a fuss about this. Local paper?
Abd say what?
'I'm annoyed that we have to pay private company rates for an extracurricular activity that used to be done by teachers for free but they don't anymore because they are being kept back doing intervention multiple nights a week, drowning in paperwork and other increased pressures as CAMHS and social servuves issues are now school issues. Oh and because some teachers ended up getting fed up with dealing with lots if parental complaints about basic rules in school that there's no way they're going to do more for free out of school abd deal with all the hassle'

Should add, I do DofE at my school. Lots og us do it for free which keeps the cost down.

Unfortunately education is a changing. Kicking off to your local paper won't reduce the cost. Thr school will jist decide to pull it because why waste their time if what theu are trying ti offer isn't good enough?

This outsourcing of the activities is the way it’s going isn’t it.

Schools are so stretched, so staff just can’t give up the extra time needed to train to deliver D of E and then give their time to after school activities and weekend expeditions, when they already have X hours work to do after school each evening, or being involved has costs which come out of their own pockets - such as buying their own tent or travel.

Outside companies need to cover their costs of training their staff to required standards to meet outdoor licensing and DBS requirements and to make a profit. It will be difficult in this bays is to provide DofE for much less than a couple of hundred quid and much more at Gold level. And equipment will be on top of this.

D of E at prices of £25 only ever worked if hugely subsidised by either school staff or volunteers in organisations like Scouts giving their time for free. If that can’t happen, the true costs need to be paid. And sadly, they will be out of reach for many families. Schools abandoning the staffing of it is another sign of the cuts to education budgets. LAs g img up in administering it because if cost is another.

Who loses out? The less affluent. Middle class children will still access D if E via their schools and pay what’s necessary,nor go to the local Scouts and get it there. Other children won’t get to do it. It’s not down to schools but government funding. Parents think schools are ripping people off, but don’t realise it’s an ask of staff that just can’t be made now, when they are so stretched already. Plus, there are costs involved for schools when it’s run at prices like £25 and they just can’t rob the curriculum to cover it. All these extra ‘nice to haves’ go as the square becomes tighter.

So me and my bf are doing dofe but it is so fucking expensive so we ar thinking that is it actually worth it at that price 🤪
🖕

Universities aren't interested in D of E.