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?

You weren’t the only one!

You see even the min wage job ds did where he was treated badly taught him a lot about people - he didn’t hang around for long.
Dd wasn’t given paid holidays and at one stage her wage fell below min - she asked for a rise - her boss laughed and made fun of her but she got her raise and she grew a few inches in the process - my very shy Dd learned to start standing up for herself. We watched and advised both of them on how to handle interactions and they practiced these skills in an environment that had no impact on their future. We helped them turn negative experiences into positive learning experiences.

Cheating to get a pat on the head by a so called member of royalty.

That's bad but considering grassing on them is even worse.

Agree 100%. Dd left her first job as the boss was horrible, even though it was better paid than most weekend jobs and she enjoyed the work. She has a strong sense of her self worth and won't accept bad treatment and I think that is another important life skill!

DD is undertaking the bronze level. She is doing hers through St John Ambulance. They are dealing with the expedition element and she is volunteering though them to provide cover at weekends at events. The rest is all down through school. She is learning a skill through a club at lunch every week and has joined sports clubs for the physical stuff. It would quite easy to do most of it through school.

That's a shame. I suppose GS is lucky that he is in a group of like minded people who all enjoy what they are doing, I suppose the only bit he wouldn't have done otherwise was the skill and it is something that will be very use for him in life.

That's great but she could do that and DofE, DofE doesn't stop them doing other things I don't know why it is being made an either/or thing.

You’d be surprised how many teens don’t complete the necessary work for any award, not just the DofE. I quit working at college because they repeatedly forced me to falsify paperwork saying teens had completed work and I had misplaced it, when in fact they hadn’t completed it. Because funding is based on them having done the work.

They did DofE - it was fine - they had both been in scouts from the were 5 or 6 so the expedition wasn’t a challenge, the skill they were doing anyway, they enjoyed the volunteering and said it was the only thing they valued and they said they could have done that without paying £100 for DofE. The whole thing was a bit meh - none of the kids wanted to take it further.

My DC is doing DofE and has done reams and reams of hours for it. There's no way they could be "tripped up" because... they've actually done it. Photo evidence at almost every turn (can't be faked, clearly showing different days, times, clothes, people in the background etc) and all logs signed off by highly professional people with businesses who would stand to lose a lot of respect if it was found that they had signed off untrue statements about the effort put in by a DofE participant.

Not only that, but as DC has actually done the work they could also talk for hours, enthusiastically, about what they had done to achieve it. I think someone actively trying to trip them up by going into it extensively with them would be sorry they'd started!

It is possible that the volunteering, skills, and sport sections could be fairly easily faked/signed off without actually doing anything.

I'm not sure about the residential, but maybe. I mean you can just go on a paid-for adventure type break to achieve that.

But the expedition? Not unless DofE Expedition Assessors are dishonest themselves.

Will people see my daughter doing her DofE activities? Well, she is doing the same volunteering she has done for Bronze and Silver so that might well go under the radar. Her sport is being signed off by the sports centre manager but people might think she just likes going to the school gym after school. And her skill is just something she sits at home doing in front of the TV in the evenings. So at first sight it might well appear she isn't doing anything.

I think you make a very good point, my generally quite disorganised GS has logs for all the sections so when the responsible person has signed him off for say sport he has dates and times for every training session, friendly, tournament. As you say also photographic evidence. The teacher running DofE has spoken to them and confirmed what he has done, the activity centre where he did his residential has signed that off. I think keeping all the records is probably the thing he has benefitted from most. It isn't always easy to keep meticulous records over an 18 month period.

A lot qualifications that are done by young people are not done by them. Teachers do all the work.

I've seen teachers sit down and answer full exam questions for students.

Again it's become so normalised. Teachers see it as helping students. They want the students to pass.

Exams/assignments are not checked at any great detail.

I remember we had an external examiner come into our training centre once. The external examiner just looks through student folders and checks work for about one hour. Then signs off that the work is ok

I could see that all the student signatures were forged on the work. I could see that a lot of one qualification had been done by another teacher there.

The external examiner just checks that the work is done. How can she know if there is a forged signature.

She said all of the work was fine.

I don't work in that centre anymore before anyone says to report it.

I have a friend that works in another training centre. He told me that he did the full qualification work for three students. They did nothing. The extern came in and said that the work is fine. My friend has come to see what he does as completely normal. If the students don't do the work , he does it for them.

These are national qualifications

A lot qualifications that are done by young people are not done by them. Teachers do all the work.

Well that explains the dire shortage of teachers, doesn't it? And the solution to the teacher recruitment crisis is now obvious. I know the PE teacher sees all of yr9 & y10 at a school with 105/year, just imagine how much work she has to do for 210 pupils.

Or even a math or French teacher, might have 150 pupils to teach, taking GCSEs this year. Gawd, no wonder the teachers are exhausted. Alert the government and Unions ! No need for this strike malarky. Just tell the teachers to rein their necks in & stop doing work for 100+ pupils.

I wonder why they bother teaching & lesson planning at all. They should just put films on & quietly do all the exam material instead, shouldn't they? Tell the kids to bunk off in the sun.

I wasn't talking about secondary school teachers. I was talking about tutors in training centres.

I worked in training centres where tutors taught 18-19 year olds.

And those training centres did DofE, that the teachers went on the expeditions for the students, did the physical, volunteering and learnt skills for the students?

I wasn't talking about DofE. I was talking about other qualifications.

I was just pointing out that it goes on everywhere.

training Programmes receive funding and recognition for student pass rates . So they often falsify student documents.

See another lady above me has said that she was told to lie about students doing work in a college that she worked in. They hadn't completed the work. She was told to say that they had.

Any qualification that can easily be gained by cheating becomes worthless before very long.

So really rather different from DofE that doesn't recieve any funding from anyone and does not have any targets for pass rates.

Yup. This is NOT the thread I was expecting to read when I saw that title.

It doesn't matter that it doesn't receive funding.

Teachers don't like students to fail. It looks bad on a teacher if the student fails. So the teacher will often do the students work for them.

As is the case in the OP's post. The teacher did the DofE work for him

Do you have any evidence to support this slur on all teachers?

Are you suggesting that those teachers who lead DofE do the expedition or the volunteering for the students?

Do teachers sit exams for students?

Excuse me? You are aware that the OP has said that the teacher did the students dof work. And she is absolutely sure of it.

I said , in my experience, I have worked in secondary schools and in further ed. Training centres: I have also seen a lot of teachers complete students work.

I didn't say that every teacher everywhere does this. I said that I have seen a lot of teachers do this.

See a lady above me on this thread also said that she has seen this behaviour in a college.

DofE work

So you are asserting, based on one poster who has provided no evidence to back up their claim, that many students are given DofE awards without completing the requirements?

Its not what I would call evidence.