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.

Dd has just enjoyed it and got lots out of it. The bronze I mean.

Why are they charging £250? For some sort of all in package of equipment?

We just got a kit list but luckily we had most of it already.

Have paid nearly £200 for DS, the money is for the company running the expedition, he’s done a training weekend and still to do the real expedition (bronze).
To be honest, I was annoyed at the cost until I realised that scouts/guides can do it very cheaply as they have adults that volunteer to do this with them. I’m not willing to volunteer so can’t really complain that we have to pay the adults that do this as a job.

I did d of e bronze, it was run by volunteers from the local community and was free. You had to pay a nominal fee to hire a rucksack etc.

no special meals but we had to cook an actual meal, so we did pasta with a tomato sauce.

we did a practice expedition and stayed on a campsite and then the actual expedition we had to wild camp.

i only did the expedition, not the volunteering. So really I didn’t actually do it. And also it was 12 years ago. So times have changed.

I've never heard of it costing that much! For context I did D of E at a private school we definitely used bin bags and had pot noodles!!! I can't see why they need the meal sachets?! What if they have a dietary need or allergy?!

To any teachers / volunteers on here, you are are bloody marvellous.
I know how much responsibility you have, how little sleep you get and that you’re working really hard for little reward. However, it is people like you have make a lasting impression on young people - thank you 💐

I don’t care about updates / photos / if you have a bbq or order up a Just Eat either or have a luxury item etc etc . Top respect to you all 👏

I didn’t pay a penny for dc to do it years ago. We borrowed any stuff they needed, or already had it.
Since it’s been farmed out to private companies they’re just interested in making money from it.
What happens if parents can’t afford to pay , is it for wealthier kids only now?

Good point, well said.

For those small number of schools that do still have teachers willing to volunteer to run the scheme, you should read this thread and really appreciate how lucky your dc are, and you should go to the staff and thank them profusely. (Including e-mailing the HT and telling them what stars their staff are).
Along with all the Volunteers that run this through Scouts, Guides , BB + GB, etc. Heroes every single one of you.

84% YANBU - I'll take that! Thanks for all the replies.

And to the teachers/ Scout & Guides leaders/ volunteers, you are awesome! Much respect!😍

I don't get why the kids need wayfarer meals?

Sack of pasta, sausage of chorizo, carton of passata and one of beans, done.

If you can't boil water you are a bit fucked really d of e wise.

The wayfarer meals are easier to transport. Also DS has allergies so had to be responsible for his own food.

DofE provision seems to be so patchy. When DS1 did his bronze, there were loads of school groups leaving from the same drop-off point and they were all being managed by a third party provider. They seemed pretty sussed but I bet those kids were paying lots more than the £60 we paid! We had a school teacher lead it (organisational skills and communication were not her bag but it all worked out ok in the end) and some other kind teachers volunteered as support staff and assessors on the practice and final expedition weekends. I suppose the money went towards renewing equipment like tents, trangias and fuel (provided by school), subsidising rucksack loan for kids who couldn't afford it, and paying the lead staff member to do weekly after school sessions (I think she's technical support staff and probably not paid for after-hours work).

Our lot were also banned from taking Pot Noodles. I think it's an official DofE ban though god knows, their various rules get interpreted in very different ways by different schools and providers. But we were told they had to make a 'substantial meal' by cooking ingredients together, so the Wayfarer meals were a bit of a grey area. I was personally in favour of them as they didn't weigh much and were quite nice (we sampled a couple) plus didn't need keeping cold. DS's group ended up taking fresh filled pasta (we froze it beforehand to keep it cold) and sausages, which they discovered were too thick to cook through on their meagre supply of trangia fuel....

If they do it with the scouts then it will be a lot cheaper. I think our group charges £50 for DofE and we help source the equipment as well.

My children didn't pay to do it. What is the £250 for?

Also, don't you have a local facebook selling sute - all this stuff is sold like a conveyor belt on mine for not very much.

My children didn't pay to do it. What is the £250 for?
If an outside provider runs it then they cost a fortune.

When I've done it we've been a volunteer staff team, but that's probably in the minority now.

Schools can now barely afford to put teachers in front of a class. How do you think they can afford to provide all the equipment for those doing DofE? This whole thread is about how expensive it is to kit out ONE child. The school would be paying many thousands of pounds on equipment to loan out to whole cohort of participants.

LEAs used to have kit stores that schools could borrow kit from as well.

LEAs are becoming a thing of the past, of course. Nearly all the schools around me are not LEA.

I'm no longer teaching, and though I miss the job in many ways, I'm relieved not to be. There is very little room, timewise or financially to do these 'extras'. I'm very glad that my DDs had the opportunity to do DofE (though even back then, a couple of decades ago, rucksacks weren't provided by the school) and that their teachers were not so totally overworked, and had time and headspace to volunteer for the amount of work (much of it behind the scenes) that running the scheme needs.
I can quite understand them asking an outside agency to run it, rather than the school not have it available to pupils at all.

I can understand why getting an external business to organise/supervise must be expensive. The insurance must be horrific.

Don't see the problem with pot noodles, I've lived for a week off them in the past, I'm sure someone younger would survive it, so long as it's not Beef and Onion.

It's just price gorging.

GasPanic
The issue with pot noodles and other fairly empty calorie food is that the students doing Duke of Edinburgh have very different fitness levels and most don't have a good enough understanding of how to fuel for an expedition when they start.

Some groups, like mine, run a session on expedition preparation, meal planning, how to pack effectively etc. Others will suggest standard boil in the bag meals because it's easier. Students not fuelling properly can easily become a safety issue.

I've had situations where students not eating properly has caused (in no particular order) huge problems for their group in terms of morale and pace, the student themselves has become unwell or upset due to lacking in energy, the group has ended up using their emergency rations to get the sugar level up because one of their group has been irresponsible with their food intake, the group pace has slowed so they were very late into camp on an evening because one person was exhausted, other members of the groups have filled their rucksacks heavier to lighten the load of the group member who hasn't eaten properly.
The psychological and physical load it places on the team when one student doesn't bother to take responsibility for their own food is upsetting to see as a member of staff. When other groups come into camp excited, the group affected by a peer being irresponsible usually trudge in late and need a huge amount of TLC and encouragement from staff to help boost their confidence.

That's before the implications of staffing having to respond to these situations, which could have been avoided.

I thought the whole point was independence and planning. The implications being that they also need to learn from their own mistakes?

I know there have been rescues from Dartmoor over the years when the weather has turned bad, but the groups I see out around Surrey are rarely more than 2 miles from a shop, or half a mile from a house, so its not exactly the wilderness.

GS doing gold and I don't know about a chorizo, he wants 4. I'm pretty sure he will eat them plus his pasta and breakfast bars. I think gold expedition is 5 days, maybe 4, so a strapping 6ft 18 year old will probably eat his own weight in chorizo if given a chance.

Just to add be careful to get the chorizo that doesn't need to be kept in a fridge, if they are doing a summer expedition food safety is important as by day 4 food that needs refrigeration will be pretty ripe.

Independence and planning is part of it, but as staff we also have a duty of care.

Having half a dozen students out for hours longer and carrying additional kit, not because of an emergency, but because one person decided to skip breakfast, eat all their sweet, have a pot noodle for tea before hardly eating anything the next day isn't a fair situation on the team. That isn't about learning from mistakes. It's one teen being selfish and/or irresponsible and putting a large burden on their team.

Now Bronze is available to Year 9 pupils the level of maturity, in my opinion, is overall lower. Parental expectations of DofE have also changed over the years in my experience. The level of mollycoddling that's expected has increased, which correlates with an increase in students who've had limited independent outdoor time.

The funniest complaint I've known a colleague receive was that their child's feet were tired when they got home so could the next walk be shorter.

DoE through schools are expensive. I did mine through Scouts. So did my boys. No weird rules like no bin bags, no pot noodles etc