The benefits of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) are widely known. The DofE is the world’s leading youth achievement award, organised into progressive Bronze, Silver and Gold levels across a wide range of activities designed to encourage leadership, resilience and team-building skills. For participants it’s a chance to boost their CV, improve their university prospects and make new friends.
For the adults who volunteer to support them – whether teachers or youth leaders – it’s an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and management capabilities.
“It gives teachers skillsets they wouldn’t necessarily gain from ordinary teacher training,” says Ian Newbery, DofE’s programme and quality manager. “For some, it’s the first interaction they will have with higher management within their school.”
A DofE volunteer will learn about events management and marketing. They might get involved in the booking of outside expedition and training providers, or hone their recruitment skills by enlisting other teachers or parents and guardians as volunteers. “We also ask them to produce a development plan that brings these elements together,” he says.
Newbery and his team are currently preparing a range of new management training modules for DofE volunteers. “We want to try to help our volunteers develop and promote the programme as well as meet the requirements involved in delivering it, as opposed to just leading an expedition,” he says. The management training includes modules to help volunteers understand different leadership and management styles and recognise their own style, as well as how to manage others to get the best results. “There is an awful lot of useful stuff in here for teachers,” he says.
Jasmine Baker is PE teacher and head of enrichment at the Blue Coat school in Liverpool, where she is also the DofE coordinator. Baker completed all three levels of the DofE herself as a youth. “I’ve basically never not been involved with the DofE,” she says.
Along with seven teaching staff volunteers, Baker is in charge of 52 Gold, 92 Silver and 124 Bronze DofE participants at the school, running expeditions in the Lake District and other parts of the Lancashire countryside. “In a nutshell, most of our year 9 students are now doing their Bronze Award, which I am personally really pleased about.” Baker also works closely with the North of England DofE regional office, without which she says the school would be unable to deliver the programme.
“As a teacher it’s given me a breadth of organisational skills,” Baker says, “even if it’s just how to get a group of panicking city young people past a field of cows.” In fact, Baker credits her DofE work with her promotion to head of the school’s Extended Project Qualification and head of the Careers Information Advice and Guidance service lessons in key stage 5 and says the experience has taught her valuable skills.
Baker’s school has been hugely supportive of her work with the DofE. “They really see the benefit to the students,” she says, “and we’re lucky to have a great support base here.”
Ian Newbery says: “Being able to acquire experience and knowledge to exhibit professional development is vital for any teachers who want to advance in their careers. Being a DofE manager gives them probably one of the only opportunities to learn a range of management skills and techniques that they couldn’t otherwise in the usual classroom environment.”
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