Duke of Edinburgh award

[CurlyhairedAssassin]

Don't know what to do about this as I don't know what's morally correct so would appreciate some advice.

DS in year 9 enrolled in bronze Duke of Edinburgh at the end of the autumn term. We paid a £50 deposit, with £240 due to be paid in instalments nearer the time the practice and qualifying expedition was going to take place. The original letter said that monies were non-refundable. Fair enough, but no-one had considered a pandemic!
He was only looking seriously into getting going with the different sections at the end of Jan/Feb (various reasons- his music teacher left and he had to wait for a replacement so he could carry on with the skills section, only had 2 more lessons with the new one before lockdown, he'd wanted to join a football team for his physical section and had had to join a waiting list, and for the volunteering part, he was going to do parkrun marshalling when the weather was a bit better). All plenty of time to get it all done before September so there wasn't an issue.

Then the lockdown happened, and the practice and qualifying expeditions didn't take place. I assumed that people who had already paid for the rest of it (expedition costs) would be offered a refund, and that people who hadn't yet paid the rest would not be pursued to pay it (this was our situation). But I am getting reminders for overdue payment for the £240.

Where do I stand, do you think? I am loathe to pay for something that he hasn't been able to do and we are already out of pocket with buying all his expedition gear that he will probably have grown out of by the time he gets to go on it. All school have said is that if they carry on doing their other sections before September then they get a 2020 Certificate of Achievement, and if they then do the Silver award next year (which will be ANOTHER few hundred quid) they can use that practice expedition as their Bronze qualifying expedition, thus gaining the full Bronze award.

Really, I think DS should just leave the bronze award now, he has not been able to do the things he wanted to do for the various sections and even though school have suggested alternative lock-down friendly options, in my opinion it's just not the same experience, especially the volunteering part. I would prefer him to just go straight for the Silver one next academic year and I would be happy to pay for that as normal, as long as I'm not pursued for payment for this Bronze one that hasnt' happened as it should have.

Is that being unreasonable? If it helps, the school uses an outside company for the expedition part, but I don't know what costs the school will have already paid for them. I just don't think I should be expected to pay the rest of the costs under these circumstances.

First of all, check the reminders aren’t just automated on the school system.

Then send a polite email saying you realise deposit will be lost, but don’t expect to pay the rest.

Yes I expect to lose the deposit, that's not unreasonable. It's possible the reminders are automated so I will check with the D of E leader.

We’ve had the money back.

My daughter is going bronze d of e. They did their practise expedition autumn term and she started her sport then too. Her skill was also completed before lockdown. Her volunteering was only half done but we were told they could do things at home that was not part of their normal routine and they could be assessed by a non family member which she managed to do.
It would be a shame for your son not to do it but as he has left things so late it seems unrealistic to think he could do it all now, and as you say its not the same.
All you can do is ask. I'm sure other parents are feeling the same as you.

My question here is why a school is charging £240? One of of my sons did his through school & the other through scouts. I'm pretty sure neither were charged more than the registration fee which at the time was about £20 (a few years back now though).

£240 seems absurdly expensive... What do you actually get for that?

Especially since your son hasn't been able to take part, I wouldn't be paying.

Yes it is expensive. It covers the expedition, (travel and camp fees) and I think must go to paying for communal equipment like the tents and cooking stuff. But I work in a school and I’m pretty sure they don’t charge that much in my school.

I heard back from school and they seemed to misunderstand my point and just reiterated what they’d said in the letter about being able to carry on with alternative activities and how they were working with D of E to enable people to still get their bronze. I had to reply putting it in very basic terms: can he withdraw without being pursued for the rest of the bronze money, and re-start at silver? She said she’d speak to the relevant staff and get back to me.

The more I think about it the more ridiculous it seems. I am not going to pay it. He will have nothing to show for it.

Usually when it’s it expensive it is because the school have an external company managing it.

I’m a d of e leader at a school. We run the Expeds ourselves. We don’t charge that much! £100 per pupil for us. £25 is registration £75 into finds for kit. We loan pretty much everything needed for exped as some of our pupils would really struggle to buy what’s needed. Everything from tents to boots can be loaned. £240 seems steep!

Ask directly if money can be deferred to silver instead as he won’t be completing his bronze. Although I do think it would be a shame if he didn’t do it. You can do lockdown friendly activities and hopefully things will start to lift soon. They should then run an extra expedition next year to complete the bronze. Your son can learn a new skills at home, complete his own physical fitness challenge and could do something like volunteer gardening work in the community or socially distanced food shopping for elderly neighbours? Take photos of these activities and keep a diary. These would be acceptable. Seems a shame not to go ahead with it as if he does decided to do silver and then gold he wouldn’t qualify for the final full award at the palace if he didn’t do bronze. Having said that if he really doesn’t want to they should be able to give your money back.

Yes it is run by external company. It doesn’t seem a very inclusive way of doing it, to me, when it costs that much. We can afford it, it just annoys me when it’s so much more than the way other schools do it!

THey have said that if he went on to do silver then they would allow the practice expedition for that to count for the bronze expedition and they would then get the full bronze award if they also did the alternative suggestions for finishing volunteering etc cos of the circumstances. They would have a cheek charging the full amount again for the silver though I would have thought if kids had already paid this much for this way of doing the bronze.

I didn’t know that you wouldn’t qualify to go to the place if you hadn’t done all 3 levels. No-one has told us that and I haven’t read it anywhere. School has also confused me, and put me off, by saying that pupils will need an assessors report for each activity. This is even in the letter about the alternative suggestions for finishing the activity parts. Well, who is going to assess things that are done at home/of your own volition for the volunteering? Is the person who is in charge of D of E at school supposed to write The assessor’s report for those sorts of things? Because this has never been made clear to us so when dS1 did the bronze we organised activities that had a “leader” so they could sign him off.

I paid £280 up front to school. Yuk.
Hasn't done the volunteering as it was in school....not done swimming skill, physical sport. Its non refundable.
Wont be signing up next year.
The school said it can carry on in lockdown.....um how????

I did D of E as a kid in the 80s - I don’t remember my parents paying for anything!

I can’t believe the expense!

We only paid £50 for bronze and £120 for silver thats so expensive! I would ask about not paid remainder but imo it sounds like he left it all too late to complete anyway. Our school have continued it with pupils finding alterntive volunteering etc

if he does decided to do silver and then gold he wouldn’t qualify for the final full award at the palace if he didn’t do bronze.

Not true, DS1 did Bronze and Gold only and had an invite to the palace.

Op, what's happening is that the external co's don't want to refund in case they go out of business.

Our school had their refund via insurance which was then given back to parents with only the DofE registration fee deducted.

Can you ask the school if their insurance would cover it?

I’m a DofE leader and I’ve never heard that you have to have done all three levels to go to the palace.

@CurlyhairedAssassin not sure if you’ve already seen this, but it has some guidance on changes to assessor requirements: www.dofe.org/dofewithadifference/programme-changes

I totally agree though, you shouldn’t have to pay the money, the majority of it (if not all) will be for expeds that won’t be happening this year. If your son wants to continue you could look into if there are any open centres locally, everything he’s done so far could be transferred and generally they run their own expeds so are often a lot cheaper.

@sadwithkiddies Lots of volunteering from home ideas here:
www.dofe.org/thelatest/volunteer-remotely/
www.leonardcheshire.org/get-involved/volunteer-us/social-action

There is no time limit or requirement to do all three levels so I would abandon it for now and lose deposit. No idea why the fee is so much Bronze is only overnight and usually fairly local. Maybe you can sell outgrown kit on next year.

Thank you @Skigal86 We are isolated so I just cant get my head around it all.
DC has sen and hasn't turned up to the online meetings etc and I haven't been informed of them blah blah

£280 down the drain.
I'll speak to school in September- it's an indie so the entire so is returning them thankfully.

@sadwithkiddies I don’t see that it should be an issue to carry on from September once your child is back in school, they can’t do expeditions at the moment so the money should just cover the expeds when they are able to happen and the other bits can be worked on as and when they’re able to, it shouldn’t be a yearly fee, especially when you’ve not got what you’ve paid for this year!

Having checked with people much more knowledgable and experienced than I, the statement about needing to complete all levels to go to the palaces for the Gold Award Presentation Is completely untrue. Anyone who completes the gold award is eligible to go. I was fairly sure it wasn’t right but double checked with others who run dofe in case I’d missed something

D of E was started to give deprived children a leg up in life. £250 is way over the top.

In the context of holiday refunds, they've been talking about "frustrated contracts" - if something happens to render it impossible for the contract to be delivered - like a ban on going out, or meeting people - then the contract is "frustrated" and any money paid has to be returned. Worth looking into.

I did D of E as a kid in the 80s - I don’t remember my parents paying for anything! I did it in the 70s with the Rangers. What's astonishing me is the level of organisation around the expedition side - we were led to believe it was about personal initiative, and were expected to organise both practice and real thing by ourselves, right down to choice of where to go.

Blimey! When I did my D of E we paid about a tenner to cover petrol and then just set off with a tent and found an empty field to camp in. I thought it was about being self sufficient and survival skills?

I agree with previous posters that you don't have to do all 3 levels to go to the Palace. I skipped Silver and I still went to the Palace. It's for anyone who completes Gold (which incidentally is a major project and he may not end up doing it anyway.... so making decisions based on one outing to a palace for a couple of hours is not necessarily the way forward.)

Scouts/Explorer Scouts often provide a much cheaper, more inclusive way to do D of E, so you might want to check this in your area. Personally I think this is much more in the spirit of D of E. It's depressing when schools farm it out to a profitmaking company because no teachers will volunteer to lead the expedition stuff. It's turning D of E into yet another middle class paid hobby.

I agree re scouts...sadly my dc behaviour meant they could not meet their needs. School can as they have support from LA. I therefore paid up the fee as DC desperate to do dofe and now they still cant.
God i hate this C19 for so reasons!

You have to complete the Bronze award to be eligible to start the silver or gold awards.You can't just go in at silver level but you can bypass silver and go straight to gold from bronze.
My eldest did it through school £240 2 years ago. Ds2 is currently awaiting practice & full expedition again through school £280 his twinning however is completing hers through explorer scouts and its only cost £20 for registration plus £10 for her practice expedition.
Scouts are able to charge less as the leaders have all necessary qualifications/skills to hold the expeditions.
I so wish the boys had carried on at explorers id have saved a bloody fortune