AIBU to despair about DofE cheating

[WhatTheHeckIsIt]

Someone I know very well is the teacher who leads the Duke of Edinburgh at a school. Their teen is going to Buckingham Palace to receive their gold award. There is no way on this planet the teen has completed any of the activities - it's a stitch up.

It's made me feel really sad.

a) I expected more of this person
b) I expected more of their child
c) how could you let your child accept an award amongst people who have worked really hard to achieve it
d) it devalues everyone else's award
e) it's just shit

Rant over - but there's nothing I can do is there?

If they did not do it then they know they didn't do it. So the award means nothing. They can't be proud of an achievement they didn't do. So pity the poor person - I'd be so embarrassed and ashamed to stand up there to get something I didn't earn.

You often end up when in the catchment area of one finding the non church school you can get your kids into has a lot of issues/is terribly rated and gets poor results. We moved from practically next door to an outstanding school to get into catchment of our kids school because the one next door was Catholic and we aren’t. I totally sympathise with those who go to church though. It’s pretty shocking you have a bunch of largely state funded schools that are only open to a minority of kids. Comparing it to cheating to get a qualification just makes me 🙄

Awards aren’t allocated on a bell curve so it doesn’t devalue anyone else’s award.

YABU

They forgot about reporting to God, oh and also the mn mods..😆

Way way back when we were doing our Gold expedition one of the other teams managed to complete their expedition by mostly using the bus. Our jaws dropped when they told us - no idea how they did it and somehow they got away with it. Considering we were on a large island in Scotland and the assessor was local, you’d have thought someone would have noticed a bunch of teenagers with backpacks on a bus rather than in the hills! We were mightily cheesed off too when we got reprimanded by the assessor for taking a large on-road detour one day when we couldn’t get through our planned route.

We were pleased with our achievement. I would like to think that the cheats experience wasn’t quite so fulfilling.

I don't know how you know. My GS is just coming to the end of his Gold DofE and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who knows he has done it all. He does his sport and his volunteering at a club, he'd just seem like a kid who is into his sport and at the club lots. His skill is something he can do without leaving the house, so think of something online. His expedition is just like a school trip. He has friends who have done their volunteering at school during the school day, so lunch time or during free periods.

Honestly if you knew me you wouldn't have a clue what he's done for it.

@WhatTheHeckIsIt am assuming this is a family member or colleague? As can't imagine you'd choose to meet up several times a week with someone you have such a low opinion of?

Other than medicine they really won't

You don't know they haven't completed the activities.
Do they do absolutely nothing?
If they play a musical instrument that counts as a skill.
Sport counts.
They might have done the expeditions and not told you about it. The teen might have gone along on expeditions the parent runs.
They could well have done voluntary work they just haven't told you about it.

If you read the original post you’ll see that I express disappointment which suggests I didn’t have a low opinion of them as standard. The disappointment comes from cheating not being what I would expect from this person.

so either: dob them in, or stop thinking about it.

This goes on absolutely everywhere. I've worked in loads of youth work centres. In the centres, the young people completed national qualifications.

in each centre that I worked in, the young people would start the qualification but would often get fed up and not do the full work, the assignments.

ive worked in about five different youth work/training centres.

In every centre that Ive been in, I've seen the tutors/ youth workers do the work for the young people.

It wouldn't look good for the centre if all the teenagers failed. So the tutors simply did all of the work for them.

I've seen tutors write full assignments, forge exams, forge student signatures.

I know one teenager that never did the slightest bit of work, receive a full national award. His tutor did every assignment for him.

Education centres and educational programmes like this, are full of corruption.

The universities that value DoE are the problem.

Could just be a case of the parent doesn't really talk about it ... anyone meeting up with my mum when I was doing DofE probably only heard from my mum about the expeditions and the gold residential...all the other bits I just arranged myself with no input from my parents ...there was a three of us that would go to the local Cancer research shop once a week and help sort through donations... And I already did a sport so no change there from my "normal" activities

The school will have rammed them through it. It's standard practice. A teenager who completes the D of E awards or even the King's Scout without their leaders/teachers/parents doing big chunks of the leg work is a rare thing these days.
(ex Scout D of E advisor and regular meany for sticking to rules).

How did they cheat? (& which school?!)

The amount of cheating that went on for the A levels in the covid years was shocking - when it's widespread and teacher-endorsed I'm not really sure where you go from there. And our school cheated with the DoE too - sharp-elbowed ethics - the experience was worthless.

Having seen 2 of mine through the awards and their mates, I’d say there’s nearly always a bit of artistic license with regard to completing some of the sections. But ‘not completing any’ of them? That would be pretty impossible imo.

How could you fake the residential or the expedition?

I've seen cheating become so normalised in schools that it is totally accepted.

Ive seen students to awards like these in schools.

I've seen teachers do a lot of work for students.

I've seen teachers forge student signatures in documents.

I once saw a document where my signature was forged into it.

The document needed to be signed by a tutor to say that a tutor had witnessed the student doing so many hours of work.

Some other teacher had signed my name on it , to say I had witnessed it.

This goes on all the time. It's one of those things that has become so normalised that teachers see it as normal. Even though it is wrong and corrupt.

It will take one teacher to whistleblow on it, before more stringent checking takes place

So are you saying there were lots of people involved in the cheating? Everything has to be signed off with evidence provided. I don’t understand. His mum couldn’t have just signed it off for him as far as I’m aware. It didn’t even work like that for my sons bronze award. I only know one person that’s completed the gold award and it was a really thorough assessment and sign off process. Nothing like bronze award.

No UK university I have ever spoken to has said that. Now I accept that there might be one out there that I am yet to talk to about their admissions, but that seems increasingly unlikely.

I had no idea it’s so widespread!

Where in the 20 conditions for expeditions does it say that one can't pass if one gets lost?

How does that work? My GS is one of a dozen year 13s doing their gold DofE, is his 40 something female teacher likely to do 12 hrs a week volunteering for them, or to go on 12 residentials all the time pretending to be an 18 year old boy. At 70 I'm certainly not planning on doing his expedition for him.

All the England Gold Award presentations are now at Buckingham Palace (they didn't use to be). The format has changed next one is on 19th May.