To think D of E is a massive swindle

[DofEswindle]

Namechanged in case DD sees this!

She's doing Duke of Edinburgh Bronze with the school for the bargain (hah!) price of £250. I thought everything would be included for that money but we've now been told they need to get a rucksack liner ("no bin bags!") and fancy Wayfarer meal sachets ("no pot noodles!") as well as being told we can hire sleeping mats, sleeping bags etc. if we don't have them.

It just feels like a massive cash-in by the company organising it and Go Outdoors etc to make as much money as they can from gullible parents (me). I assumed the kids would meal plan together and work out what supplies to bring but they've all been told to get special sachets of ready meals at £4.50 each ("no pot noodles" but they are basically posh pot noodles).

Surely D of E should be about teamwork and loving the outdoors not sending your mum to spend a fortune in a camping shop? We're not on benefits so couldn't claim any help from school but £250 is an awful lot of money to spend a night in a field.

@jgw1 my autistic daughter simply wouldn’t cope with the expedition part.
So disability is definitely a barrier.

YABU to blame this on DofE. D of E scheme is about the entire thing being affordable!

The cost is down to the school. Our school run D of E, and the costs are an absolute minimum e.g. parents drop of kids, they bring (and plan) their own food etc... we have a supply of second hand kit if kids need to borrow something etc...

The D of E website says:

The fact is the royal family is to be served not to serve, to keep all their money and assets away from scrutiny and taxation but happy to receive more form the tax paying commoners.
They don't contribute money to any charity or to the needy in society.
They take pictures with/at charities and with a handful of needy but never given even 0.001% of their money to them.
I know many will bring out their swords but it just shows the extent of the brain washing together with the BM, the RF have been able to carry out on the British people.
So yes, after taxes are deducted from your earners you pay for the privilege of sleeping in the field under the sanction of the richest in the land.

I use the orange survival bags inside my rucksack to keep everything dry. They last for years !

My original DoE rucksack has been all over the world now !

I don't know why schools are getting the blame either! Unless you have good citizens willing to volunteer to train youngsters in map-reading, first aid, etc and run practice and qualifying expeditions then what do you do? Either not offer it at all or get in paid outsiders. Our friends have volunteered for years as a husband and wife team even though they have no link to the school any more. They are giving up now because they are fed up of being taken for granted. At the end of one expedition instead of being thanked they were sworn at for the bus being back an hour late. (Their bus, their petrol etc). Feel bad for them and also the students that will miss out now.

If you are going to use your rucksack in the future a lot then a proper liner is useful and will last.

But a decent binliner (or even two) is fine for a one off expedition.

Afaik the income from the Crown estates goes straight to the government which give them 25% back to live on. But to get people frothing it makes more sense to make something up.

When my daughter did her Dof E’s ( bronze and silver) via secondary school, it was up to them to plan their meals and what to take! The only thing I bought her was a decent rucksack and boots. And I sure as heck don’t remember paying anything like that amount of money, because there’s no way I could have afforded it at the time!

It is a fantastic opportunity and really helped with life skills. For safety they need staff and vehicles etc which all costs. You don't need to buy special food my daughter made homemade tomato sauce froze it and took pasta. She also took pesto and canned corn. Add fruit, cereal bars etc and they don't starve.

It's only a fantastic opportunity and building life skills if lead correctly - with the young people taught how to make appropriate nutritional decisions, rather than "buy this, buy that". That's the point the OP is making. Some organisations are insistent that the participants have specific brands of meal/ kit/ etc, rather than teach how to make informed decisions about such stuff.

My kids are in the army cadets and will pay £20 per level of award.
Kit cost are 0 because it's all either part of their regular kit or leant to them by the army cadets.
Meals are army ration packs cooked in mess tins all supplied by the cadet platoon.
Oh and they line their bergens (big backpacks) with bin bags for all their field exercises whether it's regular field camp or DofE and it does the job perfectly well 😆

I'd love to know what adults buy those special wayfarer things. Tins and pot noodles for us.

Adults that regularly walk carrying all their kit. Walkers, climbers, even wild swimmers who consciously look at the weight of everything they are carrying and take things that are as lightweight as possible.
The most basic expedition training being given 50 years ago started with "no tins of anything" - that goes against any training in how to pack an expedition rucksack.

and yet my dc did his Gold expedition (and practice and training) with a young man in his group who has autism. Obviously all people with autism are individuals who have different strengths and needs, just the same as all people who don't have autism have different strengths and needs.
There was another person in their group who had a physical disability.
Adjustments were put in place for both of the people in the group with disabilities, and those who didn't worked as a team to offer what additional support that they could so that all the group achieved the expedition part of the award.

The DofE scheme is very flexible to enable people of all abilities to achieve it. It is all based around improvement, individual challenge, getting out of your comfort zone and achieving new things.
Those whose needs are so significant that even with reasonable adjustment they would not be able to attempt it, can look at the Gateway Award.

Obviously you know your dd and I don't, so I can't talk about one individual, but I can testify that people with Autism can definitely achieve their bronze, and some go on to achieve their Silver and Gold. Obviously many don't, as in the population as a whole. It isn't meant to be easy, it is meant to challenge youngsters, and, when done properly, those that achieve the award should be proud of what they have achieved.

Nothing is for free. You either need volunteers to provide their time or you need to pay people who are qualified.
Tents, stoves etc cost money.

In the past, LEAs and schools had budgets to pay for DofE group membership, training some teachers to be mountain leaders and buying rents etc which could be lent to applicants. Paperwork requirements were less.

These days, everything needs to be heavily risk assessed, insured and run by qualified people. Large voluntary organisations like Scouts can do this. Individual schools don’t have the funds to train their staff and teachers don’t want to give up countless free time training to get qualified and running these trips for free, when already they are so stretched due to schools being underfunded.

Like lots of things, DofE has become a luxury. It wasn’t meant to be like this, but when schools are cut to the bone in resourcing, they have to prioritise books and teachers and it’s DofE which goes, or every cost passed onto parents. And then not everyone can afford it.

I’d say there’s still a lot to be got out of it and many find themselves doing activities they wouldn’t have done otherwise and being pushed outside their comfort zones. But of course it all costs and you might decide you can get those experiences cheaper and elsewhere. But lots won’t actuallly be self starters and do the stuff without DofE.

Loads of things are becoming less accessible. School trips have risen in price. Schools need to use specialist providers for insurance purposes and they have to make their profit. Schools aren’t cashing in, but the prices they then need to charge put the trips out of reach for many. The standard of living is dropping and more stuff is inacccessible to more people. It’s another sign of the times we live in.

My daughter still using the boots at nearly 30 so for us good value They all took homemade good, took it frozen and it defrosted. For last day pasta and pack of sauce with plenty of grated cheese.

What?!?!
Ours is FoC!
But DS1'S school is brilliant with the extracurriculars- possibly because we are not in a rich area. It's run by teacher volunteers, and there are no transport costs because they start and end the expedition at the school. They have plenty of gear to lend out, but DS only needs to borrow a big enough rucksack ,and a Trangia for the group.

(Oh, tell a lie, I think we have to contribute £6 for the campsite).

For those who are shelling out £100s for new kit....have you never heard of Vinted/eBay/ Facebook Marketplace?? DS's new walking boots were £20 from Vinted.