DofE

The cost of taking part in the DofE is approximately £190 per participant. This covers your child’s licence to take part in Award, cost of support transport provided during the expeditions, tents, stoves, and camp site fees. Once the first payment has been made your child will receive their participation place and Welcome Pack, which will be sent to their home address and includes their personalised DofE Discount Card. The cost of the expedition might go slightly up or down from the predicted cost due to the number of participates.  

If your child would like to take part, please complete, and return the enrolment form on TEAMS together with the sum of £55 to TMA Finance by Friday 9th December 2023 via the Macclesfield Academy gateway. The remaining payment £135 is due on Friday 10th February 2023. Both parts of the payment are required for the student to attend the training and qualifier expeditions.  

If you would like any further information in the meantime, please feel free to contact me.

The DofE is non-competitive and open to all young people – it’s about setting personal challenges and pushing personal boundaries. There are three levels of DofE programme which, when successfully completed, lead to a Bronze, Silver or Gold Award.

Through their DofE programme, students will make friends and memories and build traits like confidence, resilience and self-esteem, which can benefit mental health. They’ll gain skills and attributes for work and life, like problem-solving, team-working and self-motivation – and they’ll achieve an Award that’s recognised by top employers and can help them stand out when applying for university or jobs.

To achieve their Bronze Award, participants must complete four sections: Skills, Volunteering, Physical and their Expedition.

Every young person’s DofE 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, so they can fit around studying, hobbies and social lives. One section (normally the physical section) lasts for 24 weeks and the other two sections last for 12 weeks each. Each week your child will need to keep a record for what they have done towards their goal for that section. Once that section is completed, an independent assessor (non-family member) will need to fill out a form to declare that your child has meet the requirements for this award. This can be filled out on the paper form provided by the DofE Organisation or directly via the assessor’s gateway on the website. For more details about programmes and timescales visit DofE.org/do or the school website.  

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. 

The training event is a practise hike from the Macclesfield Academy to Tegg’s nose car park on Saturday 11th May 2024. Start time of 8am and the walk is expected to take between 6 and 7 hours. However, some students may take longer hence they will ring their parents when they are about 30 minutes from the final checkpoint. Parents to collect the students from Tegg’s Nose car park once they have completed their training walk.  

There will also be several training sessions during lunch times in which your child and their group will plan their route and prepare. Participants will only be able to do their expedition if they attend the organised training and complete at least at two sections; either the skills, physical or volunteering sections. 

The qualifying expedition will take place on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th May 2024. This will be an overnight camping expedition in Cheshire lead by Stephen Wilson. The cost of this expedition is £96, and this includes tents, stoves, and fuel for your child. Later details will be provided, but your child will need suitable clothing for the weather conditions, either hiking boots or sensible trainers for walking (not football or studded shoes). Full kit list will be provided by the camping organisation in spring 2023.  

It is compulsory that your child attend all the training and expeditions on the dates above to qualify for the Bronze Award. 

The 20 Conditions of the Expedtion Section 

Participants can create their DofE programme and record their progress using eDofE, the DofE’s digital system, available online at eDofE.org and through the DofE app – downloadable for free from Google Play and the App Store.  

Once enrolled, we will set up their eDofE account and they will receive details of how to sign in and get started. This will be done in school, when this is completed, the students will be able to access their accounts either at home or on their phones. I recommend going through the sections together and discussing what they already do that can be applied toward this Award.  

Sometime finding an assessor can seem quite difficult. There are many different people who can assess a section for your child. Examples include a member of staff from the Macclesfield Academy, a coach or leader of your child’s group or a family friend that has regularly seen your child working on that section.  

All the assessor needs to know is when your child will start that section, their participant ID number, what they are hoping to achieve from doing this section and evidence that they have worked towards it each week. Finally, they can either fill in the paper form from your Welcome pack or enter the information directly via the eDofe gateway (https://www.dofe.org/assessor).  

All sections must be signed by an assessor before the Award can be verified and the certificates issued.  

Writing Assessor Reports 

Here is a list of useful websites to help support both you and your child during this process: 

DofE online account 

The web gateway for the Assessor to directly report to

A list of organisations for volunteering

Programme of ideas for volunteering: https://www.dofe.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/programme_ideas_-_volunteering.pdf 

Programme of ideas for the skills section: https://www.dofe.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/programme_ideas_-_skills.pdf 

Programme of ideas for the physical section: https://www.dofe.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/programme-ideas-Physical-1-1.pdf