Duke Of Edinburgh

Ithas been a testing year for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. However, despite the problems thrown at us by Covid -19, the award continues to be ever popular at St. Olave’s. In true DofE style, the scheme adapted allowing expeditions to operate with no overnight camping. Family members were allowed to sign off other sections, acting as ‘assessors’; all materials and booklets went online, being emailed directly to participants. The Bronze and Silver awards both offered the additional option of the ‘Achievement’ Award, giving participants the option of completing all sections bar the expedition before progressing to the next award level. They could then upgrade to the full award once they had undertaken the practice expedition, for example, complete Bronze Achievement Award, sign up and complete the Silver practice expedition enabling the participant to receive Bronze ‘Full’ Award.

After the hiatus brought about by Covid -19, the DofE Team quickly got into the swing of things. We started off in early June with the Silver assessed expedition with Year 12s who had missed out on completing their expedition at the beginning of 2021 when the country went into lockdown again. We were still unable to include overnight camping due to continuing restrictions, but we banished the memory of the cold and rainy practice expedition by enjoying three days of glorious sunshine. The groups were tested to their limits, with lots of woods to navigate through and the occasional steep hill to mix things up, including Ide Hill on day three. The six groups worked well and showed that they had remembered a lot of what they had worked on in the practice.

Two weeks later, we were trying out a new format for the Year 10 Bronze Award, the ‘Combined’ Bronze award. This was originally born from the necessity of trying to fit in as many cohorts as possible in the remaining weeks of the school year by combining the practice and assessed expeditions into one longer weekend. On day one we ran a thorough training session covering:

Expedition kit – what to wear, how to pack it and what to carry it in, as well as discussing group kit.

Navigation – map reading practice, use of a compass, creation of a route card, how to assess your surroundings in the event of getting lost.

Setting up and striking camp - discussion of the correct siting of a camp and being prepared for all weather conditions, how to pitch and repack a tent correctly, checking your site before departure (‘leave no trace’).