DofE can continue during lockdown. Please read this information to find out how you can carry on. If you fail to follow this guidance you may not qualify to be awarded your DofE.
DofE and Chief Scouts Awards
Please remember you are doing DofE and the Chief Scouts Awards in parrallel. As Scout leaders we have to maintain a balance betweeen the differing requirements of both award schemes. There will be clashes which often cause confusion. Scout Association rules will always take primacy over DofE rules.
For example the Scout Association mandates that you cannot start a Chief Scouts Award until you are over 14 years. You cannot start a Queens Scout Award until you are over 16 years. Therefore any activities you carry out under DofE before these ages cannot not be counted and you may have to repeat them at later date.
Qualifying Skills, Physical and Volunteering Activities
As per normal you must continue to log all activities. Log entries should be signed off by your Assessor. However, due to Covid-19 restrictions for a temporary period log entries can be signed off by a family member. However, this must be supported by additional evidence to show you have completed your minumum of one hour per week.
- For a physical activity such as running or cycling you will need to use a tracking application that tracks time started, the route taken and time completed. You must be able to extract this information from the application in a format that can be uploaded to the DofE web site as evidence.
- For a skills activity you must be able to show evidence of attendance and progress. for example an online course that tracks your attendance and has an assessment at the end. You must be able to extract this information from the application in a format that can be uploaded to the DofE web site as evidence. If you find online courses do not cover the full period required, you can chain together courses with a similar theme e.g. you could take several different IT courses to increase your IT skills.
- For volunteering we normally require, with the exception of Gold DofE, that all volunteering is carried out within the Scout or Guide Associations. This is to ensure Explorer Scouts can volunteer in a safe environment and also progress through the Young Leader Awards. Whilst sections are running virtually during lockdown it is more difficult for a Young Leaders to join in volunteering. Therefore during this period you can volunteer outside of scouting. However, Leaders cannot ensure your safety outside of scout meetings so parents or careers must be satisifed that the volunteering is safe for you to complete. You will still need to complete your logs and provide evidence. For online volunteering you must volunteer with a system that can provide evidence of the work you have done.
- If in doubt about how to obtain or provide evidence please consult a leader.
Changing Activities
- If due to lockdown you cannot carry on your original activity you can now change your physical, skills or volunteering activity.
- The time you spent on the original activity still counts so keep your logs for this.
- You cannot keep changing the activity unless there is a valid reason e.g. illness that has been agreed with Leaders.
- You MUST discuss the new activity will leaders and do not start it until it has been approved by Leaders
Assessors:
- Your Assessor cannot be a family member or friend. It must be someone who is independent and skilled / proficient in the activity you are undertaking.
- If you are doing music or another activity that can carry on at home and you already have an assessor e.g. you tutor or teacher that can remotely monitor your progress, they can carry on as your assessor.
- For online activities that are lead by an instructor ask if they will be your assessor.
- If due to Covid-19 this is not feasible, and the activity has been agreed with Leaders, a Leader will be assigned as the Assessor.
Expeditions
We are still unclear how Expeditions will proceed so please watch this space for more information.
Post Lockdown:
We dont yet know what will happen when lockdown ends. We suspect that anyone starting a new activity will revert to the old pre-lockdown rules. Wheras anyone who has an activity that started during or before Lockdown may be able to continue the activity under lockdown provisions, but this is less certain. There will likely be a period after lockdown were we have to operate two sets of rules in parrallel and you will have to take this into account when starting new actities or levels of DofE.
This guidance will continue to be updated as DofE make changes or we learn more during lockdown.
The DofE have supplied more information below:
Flow Chart to Decide What to Do
Other Ideas
If you are already a Young Leader you can volunteer to help run online sessions with leaders for your Beavers, Cubs and Scouts and it will count towards DofE. But you must take a pre-planned active part in the session, simply sitting back and watching the session from home is not volunteering. If you are on your Gold award you may also volunteer within Pegasus.
You can also work at home to provide activities that have been agreed with a Section Leader and that could be used in future online sessions or for when we can meet outside of lockdown.
Please remember you cannot volunteer as a Young Leader until you are 14 and have completed the Young Leader Module A training.
Now is a really good time to get all you logs up to date and upload any extra evidence you have to eDofE.
Pegasus Explorer Scouts 