The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award is a great chance for young people to broaden their horizons, discover new interests and talents, have fun with friends, develop essential skills for their future and achieve an internationally renowned Award.
Duke of Edinburgh’s Award: Basic Information
The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award is non-competitive and open to all young people – it is about setting personal challenges and pushing personal boundaries. There are three levels of Duke of Edinburgh’s Award programme which, when successfully completed, will lead to a Bronze, Silver or Gold Award.
Through their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, participants will make friends and memories and build traits like confidence, resilience and self-esteem, which can benefit mental health.
They will gain skills and attributes for work and life, like problem solving, team working and self-motivation, and they will achieve an Award that is recognised by employers and can help them stand out when applying for University places.
To achieve their Bronze Award, participants must complete four sections:
Skills, Volunteering and Physical Sections
Every young person’s Duke of Edinburgh’s Award programme is personal to them – they can choose what they would like to do for their Skills, Volunteering and Physical sections, and most activities can count. We will provide guidance and support, and students can either choose to continue an activity they already do or discover something completely new.
Activities for each section take a minimum of one hour a week over a set period of time, so they can fit around studying, hobbies and social lives. For more details about programmes and timescales visit DofE.org/do.
Expedition Section
The Expedition section involves your child working as part of a small team to plan their expedition’s aim, choose a location and do some training to make sure they are fully prepared – before spending two days and one night in the countryside.
Ahead of this, they will take part in training sessions in school covering basic expedition principles, introducing them to expedition equipment, navigation and any other training they will require.
The expedition will take place later in the year and details about dates and pre-expedition training will be passed on.
eDofE and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award app
Participants can create their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award programme and record their progress using eDofE, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award digital system, available online at eDofE.org and through the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award app – downloadable for free from Google Play and the App Store.
Joining DofE
As you can imagine there is a high demand for pupils wanting to take part in DofE and we are limited in the number of places we can offer. As such, we have to run a selection process to choose each year’s participants. When the time comes pupils will be invited to put their names forward for selection and will be informed shortly afterwards of whether they were successful or not.
DofE takes a lot of commitment from a young person to complete and we will always make this very clear to anyone interested in going for the award.
If anyone needs any more information regarding Duke of Edinburgh, whether it is someone thinking about putting in for it or are already taking part please just let me know.
Pupils can get me in the Study Bites after school club Mon – Thu (or catch me about the School) and parents/guardians can contact me on my email address as follows:
Alistair.Kenny@argyll-bute.gov.uk
Kind regards
Alistair J Kenny
Duke of Edinburgh Manager
Campbeltown Grammar School
Pupil Guide