Morning everyone,
I have a query around large DofE expeditions, mainly Wing led from what I can see on social media.
How are these large numbers achieved? 90+ in some cases on the same weekend Are they all the same leave? I believe you shouldn’t have the group setting off in the same direction and say 30mins apart. How to supervisors avoid this.
Really interested to hear people’s experience of running larger expeditions of 30+ cadets, the good and bad.
It will often depend on the location you are completing the expeds. Cannock chase and you will struggle, dartmoor would make it a lot easier.
Drop Cadets at various start points along a designated path/road so as they are not all together or as you say, give gaps but also ensure routes selected aren’t the same.
With a large number of cadets out it also means you need a large number of staff to supervise and deal with anything that may (will) go wrong.
Many organisations to operate County level DofE Expeditions, the County level organiser books up campsites, acts as the central PoC and perhaps gives each team a different checkpoint for each day to keep the teams separate, teams around the county then just plan their routes and attend the weekend.
Makes everything much more social for the adults involved.
I ran a large exped with school - a large figure 8 looping route. This gave 2 start points, with the centre of the 8 being the campsite. 1/4 groups went clockwise from top of 8, 1/4 anti-clockwise from from, 1/4 clockwise from bottom, 1/4 anti-clockwise from bottom. So groups passed each other, but on different routes.
I’ve seen this method used (albeit a double figure of 8!) for a school running 25 x bronze groups out of the same campsite - all setting off at 30min intervals. They had several supervisors out covering each loop, with assessors bouncing around the cardinal points to check in with their nominated teams. It worked okay - but felt like a DofE factory - I didn’t enjoy the experience of supervising or assessing in this manner at all and haven’t done it since.
Wing wide expeds can apply the same model. I’ve also seen staff bus in/out to start/end points rather than trying to force circular routes. It gives cadets a lot more freedom and route selection and they invest more into it.
One of the biggest issues is often “scratch teams” - where Squadrons don’t necessarily have enough cadets for a full team themselves, so they bring 2 cadets along with 3 other squadrons, and suddenly you’ve got a group with mixed training, standards who’ve never met, trying to forging things together.
We’ve attempted to dodge this by getting groups to collaborate more via Teams in advance - route planning, meal choices, kit discussions and general planning taking place over a couple of evenings in advance.
Unlike the school groups, I also have a preference for one supervisor per team who then works out their own supervision plan. Whilst there may be overlaps in the supervision planning, a solid Comms plan can help ensure the staff team can keep things running smoothly.
The best way is to ensure they are properly following the 20 conditions and planning their own route. While it is possible that 13+ groups will pick the same route, it shouldn’t actually happen, and you can give some of them different checkpoints to ensure they don’t accidentally plan the same route.
That said, especially at Bronze we should be providing guidance on their route, and given certain starting points and finish points and maybe a couple of checkpoints they won’t go majorly different.