We are in our sixth year of offering the Duke of Edinburgh's Award (DofE) at Castle Manor Academy.
DofE is an individual challenge which encourages young people to undertake constructive, challenging and enjoyable activities. There are four sections to DofE and our students are expected to fully commit to a set number of months to volunteer, improve their physical fitness, learn a new skill and undertake a two day expedition as a team.
We enrol one group every year of Bronze students in Year 9 and then they have the opportunity to do Silver DOFE in Year 10 if they like. We also support our students who go to cadets for example to complete their award within our local community,
An impact of Covid has been that we weren’t able to take part in expeditions although we did still partake in DOFE walks in small groups. We instead offered our students a virtual DOFE and all meetings were run via Teams with instructional videos. Students were and are still able to complete a DOFE certificate of achievement at both Bronze and Silver level. We have the virtual group running in 2021 alongside 30 newly recruited DOFE Bronze students who are planning to do their expedition in 2022.
Year 9 and 10 have the opportunity to take part in the DofE Bronze Award which runs weekly after school sessions, weekend walks and overnight camps.
Mrs Baldwin is our DofE Manager.
Lots of Teachers support our DOFE programme both by partaking in the walks or by leading specific clubs to cover the skill and physical sections. Many of these staff are Year 9 and 10 form tutors too which helps guide our DOFE students to success. Mr Gardiner, Mrs Farrow, Miss Bruce, Mr Teare, Mrs Brown, Mrs Kitchener, Miss Spurling for example help on a regular basis.
Delivery of the course is given by DofE trained staff, covering aspects such as map reading, how to deal with emergencies, road walking, camp craft, first aid and cooking on a camping stove.
