So my son has completed his Bronze and Silver DofE with his school, with his friends, and is really looking forward to doing his Gold expedition with his friends as they had a great time on the others and really bonded.
For Bronze, there was a ballot as there were too many students wanting to do it. Luckily he got in. Then there were too many to do Silver so we all paid a bit more and some of them had their expedition managed by an external company.
Now it's time for the Gold and we've just had the letter which says that there are likely to be too many of them so there will be a ballot again to select the cohort. I'm actually feeling a bit surprised by this as I thought having successfully done the Bronze and Silver with this school, then at worst they would do outsourcing to help resources again but it's a flat yes/no.
I'm not feeling overly 'lucky' at the moment and just feel like this is yet another letdown of life, and it hasn't even happened yet. My other son hasn't got onto Bronze although all his friends did and that was pretty awful for him, he was really upset. I think my DS will take this really hard if his friends go and he can't. I know he can do it on his own with a private company but it just isn't what he was excited about (and he doesn't get excited about much) and he's really shy so I think just doing the residential on his own will be enough of a challenge.
I'm probably massively overreacting as it hasn't happened yet, but I can't help but think this would be just our luck. Do other schools do it? I'm not aware of anyone being turned away from an activity like this from other schools (and to think we moved house for this school!).