I tell you what, you share with us what you get paid for laying concrete. Two of you, 8 days, stay away from home, you kit, insurance, travel etc.
Why is this DOE thing so elitist? As a kid I would have loved to have done this but was working on a chicken farm and for a builder (yes laying some concrete)
my folks wouldn’t have been able to pay for something like that, yes this was the 80’s but with child poverty at an all tine high this should be free.
or maybe make the higher rate taxpayers pay double so somebody who cannot pay gets the chance too.
"Why is this DOE thing so elitist? As a kid I would have loved to have done this but was working on a chicken farm and for a builder (yes laying some concrete)
my folks wouldn’t have been able to pay for something like that, yes this was the 80’s but with child poverty at an all tine high this should be free.
or maybe make the higher rate taxpayers pay double so somebody who cannot pay gets the chance too."
Elitist ? really ? i think if you read the comments it is about schools offering it with the support of teachers who are doing it free/very cheaply, schools take the piss piling more onto the teachers and the teachers withdrawing the FREE VOLUNTARY OUT OF HOURS support and the school still wanting to offer it so are having to subcontract it out to people who will not volunteer and require paying - who don't seem to answer to anyone and don't have to do risk assessments/carry correct paperwork to take groups into the hills from whats being reported here - they are passing this cost onto the parents. the alternative being the school stops offering it all together.
there are still ways to do it free/cheaply how ever you have to seek them out , they are not presented to the kids in the way it is in a school enviroment.
some might say that would be in the spirit that the DOE was intended to be.
Maybe the Duke should pay?
he can probably afford it.
Trail-rat I don’t think anyone has said that someone can send a DoE group out without risk assessment? Did they? Nor did they say you can do it without the “correct paperwork”? Nor did anyone say that if you “contract out” the expedition to an external body that they would not have to comply with specific standards.
However the gist of what you say is you can do it very cheaply if you are sufficiently motivated to find the right group; and I dare say some schools / LA’s will have schemes in place to subsidise places for those who genuinely can’t afford to pay.
Mr Smith if you want to volunteer your time to help young people get the experience you so want them to have at little or no cost then I am sure a doe group near you would be delighted to hear from you - whether that is for the expedition or perhaps teaching some of your chicken rearing skills for the skill section.
I’m no royalist, but when run as the duke originally envisaged it the costs are negligible. Perhaps the suggested move towards it being on the curriculum is a way to make the state pay - but it dilutes the value of the award - currently you only get it by bothering to get up off your ass and go and do something outside the prescriptive world of education, and develop yourself beyond the spoon fed. I am sure that I was told he set the scheme up to replicate something that happened at Gordonstoun which he felt should be open to everyone.
Ok its a long time ago but when I did my DOE we didn't have any instructers following us around or anything else. We went youth hosteling and walking.
Is it still possible to do it like this or does it all have to have a teacher alongside now?
Is it still possible to do it like this or does it all have to have a teacher alongside now?
It really depends on the authority, school, individual leaders and to a degree, the route chosen. I spent years trying to convince my colleague who organised DofE in our school to let the pupils have more freedom / autonomy. She was absolutely determined to be within sight of the pupils pretty much 100% of the time, even on their qualifying exped which is against the rules and spirit of the award and also gives a much diminished experience for them.
It's also possible tj that you were being watched and just didn't realise!
No I was not being watched. I knew the teachers fairly well and knew what was going on.
Elitist nope. I put close to 150 kids through bronze in the last 3 year's total cost to them £0.00
So who pays for it when it's zero cost to the kids/parents. Missws wasnt at all happy that we suggested it coyld be part of her Christmas presents this year 😂
We (turn of millennium) seem to have been supervised much as tj was. To the extent that executive decisions may have been made after the supervisor visited us and (in hindsight) daft decisions taken in order to "get out of Dodge". Tramping a path in twilight to make a night camp beat the hell out of another night getting eaten alive in a Lochaber bog. Teacher was somewhat surprised to find us in Spean Bridge early, he didn't know we'd been there for six hours already...
Probably doing night moves in cadets made us blasé but in fairness we could navigate and the guy that didn't want to go on got folk to stay with him in a bothy. Would have been failed on the spot but meh, not the worst scandal some of the numpties at my school got involved in on an expend.
Heehee. On one of my expeds, we arrived at our overnight halt, pitched tents and got cooking. All observed by our assessor. As scouts very much used to doing this, it took no time at all. He wandered over, had a chat for 15 mins while the beanfeast cooked to perfection, then went away to find other groups in the area he was more concerned about.
We chucked the shitty grub in the bin, borrowed a car and went to the local chippy, then the pub.
Good times!
No cost to kids was a mixture of me spending a huge amount of time scrounging money from various places and having a school in an area of deprivation and all staff volunteering from within the school. Rule changes mean that staff including me can't really do expeds
If I was charging for my time spent making it free it would have been pricey.