although i see where you are coming from i don’t think it would change much in the grand scheme of things on a squadron level.
if like most Sqns when little Jonny is bombarded with a pile of paperwork to fill out (F3822A, standing Order form, gift aid, etc) then an enrolment form for DoE isnt going to add a great deal of burden.
what would change things would be the cost of registration.
as mentioned i am ignorant to the DoE so have no idea but let us say it is £10 to register, just like the paperwork it will be dealt with by the parents and not the new recruit and so unlikely to be missed or noticed by the one person who needs interest in the scheme.
besides if the recruit has got this far in terms of a commitment then they (Recruit and parent) have believed all the bumf they have been fed (whether accurate or not) about an annual flight a year, flying scholarships, and regular trips to RAF stations, and of course the DofE scheme so won’t think anything of the £10 fee, some may even be so ignorant they will think it was a “joining fee” to the Corps rather than the DofE
if it were £100 then sure enough in time questions would be asked if Jonny didn’t have his award. It is a significant sum and any parent would want to see something from the cost and so there would be an interest to complete, but more likely from the parent rather than the cadet.
but who would pay £100 upfront upon joining? it would put so many recruits off you’d struggle to maintain numbers.
to combat this you’d have to request the payment at a more appropriate time, like when they start the DofE scheme through the normal Squadron cycle…
and this is the situation you describe showing an initial commitment prior to starting the scheme
…but I think the only way it would maintain that commitment and interest is if there was a significant cost involved which I is not in the spirit of the scheme to financially burden its participants
My issue from operating it on the Sqn for many years, is that whilst filling in the books was a pain in the proverbial, it did at least allow for the ‘less motivated’ to get their Awards and an easy to manage situation for me.
With eDofE, whilst I love the idea of it, I am having trouble getting my lot to fill out the record and upload things.
I am fully behind the ‘its up to them’ philosophy, but it doesnt help with the big stick being wagged at us as a Sqn for not completing enough. I also do not make it compulsory in any way and make them ask me for the forms rather than just issuing them prior to enrolement.
Any helpful hints welcome - we have three PCs on the Sqn so there is some time available for them. I am still looking forward to my first eDofE award going through. Hasnt happend yet!
[quote=“bigmalcmk” post=2561]My issue from operating it on the Sqn for many years, is that whilst filling in the books was a pain in the proverbial, it did at least allow for the ‘less motivated’ to get their Awards and an easy to manage situation for me.
With eDofE, whilst I love the idea of it, I am having trouble getting my lot to fill out the record and upload things.
I am fully behind the ‘its up to them’ philosophy, but it doesnt help with the big stick being wagged at us as a Sqn for not completing enough. I also do not make it compulsory in any way and make them ask me for the forms rather than just issuing them prior to enrolement.
Any helpful hints welcome - we have three PCs on the Sqn so there is some time available for them. I am still looking forward to my first eDofE award going through. Hasnt happend yet!
Cheers all
Malc[/quote]
EDofE in the grand scheme of things is no different to the books. Yes of course we want to encourage the participant to upload lots of evidence to show what they’ve done for their various sections however; the only mandatory evidence is an Assessor’s Report anyone that tells you differently doesn’t have a clue!
Although a slow process, my aim on the squadron is to get a small group of pro-active, keen cadets through the system on eDofE (which is progressing quite well now) and then once they are au fait with the eDofE system get them to act as mentors to help me to run eDofE sessions.
We are fortunate enough to have Wi-Fi and three or four squadron owned laptops so getting a small group together in a classroom is not a problem. You could even get the cadets to bring their laptops/tablets to the squadron to help you to do this.
Even if you do not have the technology, there is no reason why you can’t still do things the ‘old school’ way. The keeping track pages which used to come in the pizza boxes are useful and can be filled out like the record books and then scanned in by the participant or leader onto eDofE in one go. Extra pages are available on the DofE website under Leader>Resources and Downloads.
I am a big fan of eDofE, and one of the things which has been banded around my Wing is perhaps the Corps should be offering the achievement packs free of charge as an incentive once the cadet has completed their Award. Yes, they’re more expensive than a Bronze/Silver participation place (currently £14) and Gold (£20) but as the ATC is still struggling to hit the 40% completions target, it might be something which helps to up this figure considerably.
Top Idea! Thats pretty much our process it helps if their mate is showing them the ropes! Remember assisting as a “mentor” for DofE can count as the participant’s volunteering section! Seems daft to waste all of that time when it could count for something too!
It is simple and if you want to save wasting more trees the assessor can type their report via the internet which will send it to eDofE using http://www.dofe.org/assessor/ All they need is the participants eDofE Number!
I’ve not had one participant pay for the achievement pack yet. I’d be interested to see how many the DofE have actually sold!
Some of the Squadron have been particularly good at this side of things.
I have been lucky enough to have around 8 complete so far through this system within the year. I have a lot of the cadets signed up to do thinsg, but only once they have started a section with my clearance first.
Running eDofE Sessions with a small group also helps to motivate them, as then they are not left on their own to work it out.
“Remember assisting as a “mentor” for DofE can count as the participant’s volunteering section! Seems daft to waste all of that time when it could count for something too!”
Exactly. Plus Sports Leaders recently launched an Assistant Basic Expedition Leader (BEAL) qualification http://www.sportsleaders.org/awardsqualifications/qualifications/level-2-award-in-assisting-in-basic-expedition-leadership/ which allows young people (16+) to undertake this qualification and assist in taking people out alongside a BEL/BELA etc. They cannot operate alone, but it certainly helps with the training of cadets to undertake their expedition section as the course covers campcraft, navigation and leadership. This is definitely something which would fulfil the criteria of the volunteering section, particularly at Gold level.
The exped section is probably the only one which takes some thinking and planning from an ATC point of view. Everthing else is covered. The ATC produced a DVD on doing the DofE in the ATC in 2010. Ask your DofE Officer for a copy if you’ve not seen the video.
The ATC did run a course a couple of months ago in LASER so appropriately qualified staff are slowly becoming tutor trained by Sports Leaders to deliver these courses to cadets (and staff). Watch this space!
Great posts in this thread. I’ve recently been tasked with helping run the DofE on my squadron. For at least the last 8 years the whole programme has been a bit of a joke on my squadron with very very low levels of completion but I’m hoping to change that by being a bit more pro-active than the other staff members have been.
I’ve recently done the Intro to DofE course and whilst it was useful it hasn’t really provided all that many practical solutions to the issues I’m facing. Namely getting the cadets to fill in their sections on eDofE, I’m loath to spoon feed them their sections as that feels like it defeats the whole point of the award but at the same time I want to see them complete it. Does anyone have any suggestions for motivating them?
I’ve had 7 cadets complete their Bronze Qualifying Exped but few if any of them have filled in any sections on their eDofE. I’ve also got a load of legacy cadets who are still members of the squadron but haven’t done anything for their DofE in years and a fairly large contingent of candidates for Gold.
To make the admin slightly easier I’ve split them all into separate groups for eDofE sessions but we still don’t seem to be getting anywhere.
eDofE is a problem… I find cadets are TOO lazy to fill this in and expect it done for them.
we have sat them down watched over them, given them cheat sheets but they still won’t complete it…
Yeah I fully agree with you
However our Wing seems to moan that there seems to be
Cadets not completing the DofE
And then the parents as it’s not their kids fault the won’t complete it…
It can sometimes take a while to get done, but generally sitting them down in front of a PC at the Squadron gets things done, failing that emailing Mummy & Daddy and telling them what needs to happen yields good results.
We had a very productive night with our bunch who have just done their qualifying exped. Managed to get them all to update their eDofE accounts and they are now at least doing some of their sections!
It was literally a case of sitting them down in front of the PCs and watching them type it all in and making sure they clicked the right buttons.
Can someone with knowledge of the rules answer me the following…
Possibly @redowling one for you?
If I arrange a bronze or silver exped and have everything in place under RAFAC rules etc, but am short of an assessor…
Is it permissible to have an external DofE assessor attend and complete the assessments?
Just as many many other youth groups do.
Anyone know what rules the RAFAC has around such things? Ta.
i type with ignorance but I cannot see why an assessor needs to be RAFAC for an RAFAC “lead” DofE Expedition.
I can’t say I know of any examples but the role of an Assessor is determined by the DofE not the RAFAC so not sure why there would or should be any difference between the two - there are obvious advantages if they are RAFAC as they’re more likely to be easier to get hold of/know who to ask to prod them to reply to requests, emails etc but can’t see why someone external can’t be used…
(there may be requests from the CoC about DBS proof but by definition of the DofE Assessor and the likely participants in the scheme I would expect assessors to have a valid DBS available regardless how much unsupervised contact they might/not have)
Assessors are accredited to an individual LO or AAP, if they want to work with a different Organisation they need to be accredited by that Organisation. (I have an Assessor who works with a school and he had to be accredited by them before he could assess their activities).
It used to be a paper form but it is now done through eDofE and I believe approved by the Wing DofE Officer.
These are DofE rules rather than RAFAC ones.
There are loads of Assessors in the ATC so a general email should turn someone up.
