DofE badly organised

[Cora1942]

Dd doing DofE today .
School have given out 3 man tent to carry. Fair enough they have to carry. But main part of tent is groundsheet, fly sheet etc all in one so can’t be split up.
So one girl carries this and others pegs, poles and cooking equipment.
My Dd fitted 4kg tent plus all her equipment in her rucksack.
She could t fit in a pair of spare trousers so left behind. One of the other girls took her plate and bowl.
But third girl refused to take anything . Turns out girls 2 and 3 have small rucksacks.
So AIBU to expect the school to have checked rucksack sizes before trip and insist it’s a team thing .
I can see my Dd carrying heavy tent for two days as other students not prepared .

That sounds very annoying but I’m not sure what you can do about it. My DD will be doing the D of E in a couple of years so following with interest about what they need to carry. At the moment she is 26kg at 12 Years so it is interesting to see a 48kg kid described as very petite. She’d best get growing.

I run an Army Cadet Detachment and 4 of my cadet will be doing a Dofe exped at the end of May, next week the cadets will be bringing in all kit for a 'kit check'

Its a simple check

Actually I now remember one of the boys in DS's bronze group had a broken hand. DS came back moaning that they'd had to walk slowly, help him over stiles and give him more sleeping room in the tent (so his hand didn't bang against everything). I told him that coping with difficulties was part of the point of the expedition ... so I guess that's the same case here.

Where does it say about 48 kg student missed that ?
The rucksack weighed 15 kg and the school is going to weigh students and rucksacks to ensure not carrying above 25% so not worried about that .
Thank you everyone for your posts - happy for lessons in life re team work etc -character building .
Just don’t want backache from walking 9 miles twice with a heavy weight. Am sure would be better to build up slowly to carrying a heavy weight.

YABU

You have a couple of options:

1. go out and practise with your DD carrying a heavier bag so that she doesnt get ‘backache’
2. talk with DD about how to handle situations like this and how she can pull her team to work together (the main ethos of DofE)
3. Volunteer your time to help the teacher running DofE so that it’s not ‘badly organised’ most members of teaching staff run DofE in their own time off their own back with no extra support or help and out of the goodness of their heart so that children like your DD can have an amazing experience.
4. politely confirm with staff that the other child was in fact ‘only carrying a sausage’ children are known to exaggerate after they have been out in expediton.

Written from a teacher and DofE leader who has spent all last 3 weekends out with my students (60 of them!) on expediton.

I really hope your DD overcomes this DofE really is an amazing experience.

I agree that a massive part of the DofE expedition is learning to cope when things don't go according to plan, however, the thing with Bronze, and particularly having a training expedition (and usually training sessions before that) is to sort out things like making sure everyone can borrow the right equipment, and that everyone does understand that you have to work as a team.

and the school is going to weigh students and rucksacks to ensure not carrying above 25% so not worried about that

Wow. Now that ^ is weird.
It's always been a guide you carry no more than 1/3 of your bodyweight - great, if it has changed to 1/4, but that really is a guide, and it seems very strange if the organisers are weighing people, but not intervening in the understanding of sharing out of equipment.
My dd is away this weekend (Silver) and she was discussing with mate that one takes toothpaste, one takes suncream etc, to minimise what they carry.

www.dofeshopping.org/expedition-kit/rucksacks-and-packing/

Says here 25% of body weight so maybe guidelines changed.
And to teacher comments yes aware you volunteer - I do 10-20 hours a week voluntary work so appreciate that aspect.
I posted in AIBU to get more traffic and views. Not really annoyed with school :)

I think the guide has been < ~25% of body weight for a few years now, back - must be 5 or 6 since my DD started on hers. Maybe there's more concern about overloading growing kids who aren't used to carrying such loads, but also presumably the weight of tents has decreased over time? Anyway, that sort of weight is what fitted in a 65+10, which is pretty enormous on a 5'1 person (She worked out it was pretty much the same volume as herself!)

IIRC on her bronze, one girl in her group had a somewhat smaller rucksack than the others, but compensated by carrying denser items.

Anyway, OP, hopefully your DD will survive and be stronger for it. I'd take a small bet that the uncooperative girl drops out.

I'm going back to the 70s and 80s orginally Errol

No, as I said, it's good to have a guide, and, with lighter weight materials now commonplace (sleeping bags, tents, cookers, etc) it is easy to achieve. I think it's good to carry less. My point was it is weird the group leaders are honing in to that level of supervision on the one point, and yet don't seem to have been guiding all the participants towards the understanding that the whole team have to work together to share kit / weight / etc. in the OP's dd's case.

Never did a kit check of rucksacks when dd did hers.

She is off to the Palace next week to get her gold award.

26kg at 12yo girl is well below 5th percentile for weight.
DS is about 26kg at 10yo & pretty light compared to most the other lads.
48kg is as much as 50th percentile at 14yo (who knew?).
Most kids doing bronze are at least 15yo, though, right? 48kg is 25th percentile on the CDC chart, so not crazy I thought it might be a petite number.

26kg at 12? Really?

My DD did her DofE last year and seemed to have been put in a group of girls who were only doing it to please their parents.
DD ended up doing all the navigation for the team as the others couldn't be arsed!
On the final expedition, one other team member decided to try and do the navigation. They got hopelessly lost. My DD calmly led them to the correct spot and they then let her lead.
The overnight camp was a bit of a disaster though, they cooked dinner without making her any, (Teacher had to tell them off), then in the night the spirit fuel got spilt and they had to evacuate the tent and thankfully they had a spare.
Didn't help that for some reason a farmer was burning an old caravan in the next field... Sparks flying!
But she enjoyed it in the end and they weren't the last team home.

DD was 13 when she did her expedition. I remember her carrying 60+10 rucksack only 6/8 weeks after having her appendix removed. She struggled but managed it. After the first practise expedition, the rucksack generally does get lighter for the real one! And when they come to Gold, they manage to not take much more with them apart from food.

You are supposed to be 14 to start though
Here
The 'allowing a 13 yr old to go / make up the team with friends who are 14 is supposed to be the exception rather than the rule.
It happens sometimes to make up the numbers in Guides / Scouts etc, but better in a school to start it in Yr10 so everyone will be 14 when they start.

If this is the bronze, and especially if it is the practice, I'd have expected the organisers to have done some checking of equipment and fair sharing.

I agree with this ^. The Bronze is about learning, but you need support and guidance to begin with.

and seemed to have been put in a group of girls who were only doing it to please their parents.

Yeah, this happens quite a bit, or the school signs people up telling them how good it will be for their CV, without actually making it clear they will have to trek across fields, getting lost, carrying tents and cookers etc., put up their tent in the rain then start cooking when they are exhausted. It's why they would really do training before setting out on the practice - although I do see this is yet another weekend for all those wonderful volunteers who already give so much to allow these expeditions to happen.

Both dc1 and dc3 (who had previously done q a bit with Scouts) had this on their expeditions, 'carrying' (not literally ) people who really hadn't got a clue.

Surely they will just take turns by swapping the rucksack with the tent in between the girls. Hardly rocket science - surely as a team one of them will have the nouse to work that out!

DD's school started the bronze in year 9, silver in year 10 and gold in year 12 - so they could plan the expeditions around the main exam years. I think it is a very valuable lesson learning to work as a team and also in learning how to stick up for yourself. But you would expect bags to be checked especially for the bronze practise.

YANBU. My dd ended up with the tent recently and her pack ended up weighing slot more than 25% of her weight. I didn't know about that guidance, if I did I would have said something. She ended up not even being able to lie down that night as her back was so painful.

I always wonder why they take so much stuff. When I go camping I take a 45 litre rucsac, and it's just me so I have to carry stove, pans and tent myself.
Must say though I still get sore shoulders - you'd have to build it up for a few weeks to avoid that.

Yes 26kg at 12. Taller than average as well, just slim. It’s not a problem at all, it just played into the talk of how much weight they can carry, and I started wondering how much she might weigh when she does it and if it would make her an undesirable team mate if she was required to carry less than her mates.

It’s not important in this conversation which is all about the OP’s DD. Sorry to derail OP.

When I did silver DofE it was very much part of the ‘learning’ to say when we weren’t up to doing something - we had to go on a night walk and I had a dodgy ankle, I went anyway but in the feedback bit my teacher made the point that I should have said I couldn’t do it and not gone. That’s the hit I most remember tbh - so although I think the school could have given guidance about the size of backpack required I agree with PPs that working this kind of thing out is th pong if DofE.

*the point of!

Purple you are not derailing - I’m interested in all DofE chat :)
It is a team thing and if your daughter is small they will have to factor that in.
I’m thinking the school tent - 3 man is probably not the lightest / most compact and maybe worth ensuring you have lightest possible tent .

I’ll tell her to make friends with some tall heavy people!

And I’ll start making her carry nice heavy backpacks on days out now (though to be fair her school bag weighs a ton some days as it is)

I really wish I’d been able to do something like this as a teenager. Sounds like they have an amazing time

Update Dd back safe and well. Didn’t carry tent today - she enjoyed the walking part. And big thank you to any teachers / volunteers reading this .