The Duke of Edinburgh Award at St Edmund’s is a high quality, enjoyable, challenging and rewarding programme for our young people. It is designed to promote personal development, self-reliance and leadership skills outside of the classroom. 

The aim of the award is to give our pupils Self-confidence and skills for life. Through individual challenges, the bronze award offers a non-competitive programme of activities which encourages personal discovery and growth, self-reliance, perseverance, responsibility to themselves and service to the community.

The award consists of 4 main elements:

Volunteering-offer service to individuals or the community. This can range from being a peer mentor, supporting in a local primary school, working in a charity shop or animal sanctuary or coaching a local sports club.

Skill – This encourages discovery and development of practical and social skills and personal interests. Eg.  Learning to cook, learning to play a musical instrument, develop skills in photography or archery.

Physical – Encourages participation/improvement in physical activity. Eg.  Regular participation in a sports team, regular fitness training or participation in an outdoor activity.

Expedition – this encourages a spirit of adventure and discovery. The Expedition requires each participant to work as a group, putting their skills to the tests. Pupils must navigate themselves across the countryside and also camp overnight. Training for the expedition is completed during the winter and early spring months, with a training weekend, practice expedition and assessed expeditions taking place between May and July.

Award Ceremony 2023 Congratulation Speech

Good evening to all parents, family members, carers and most importantly all our young participants in the 2022-23 Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award. 

As you know, we are here to celebrate these young people achieving their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh’s (DofE) Award. Widely acknowledged as the world’s leading achievement award for young people, DofE programmes enable young people to strengthen their key life-skills. The DofE programme at St Edmund’s has been running for many years and complements our school’s mission tagline ‘to learn as if to live forever, to live as if to die tomorrow’. 

As DofE Manager, I am delighted to present the DofE Bronze certificates to the students tonight. I want to reiterate how truly impressive and inspiring their achievements were throughout the year. I often equate the award to running a marathon.  Everyone remembers and focuses on the final event, be that race day or the expedition, but the true success lies in the months and months of effort put in leading up to the big day.  Our young people put in so much effort in their physical exertions, their volunteering for good causes and their work towards a new skill, as well as learning about first aid, navigation, tent making and cooking on the trangias.  Our students showed great resilience and determination and I’m proud to say that this cohort of 64 is the largest group St Edmund’s has ever had in gaining their full Bronze DofE Awards. 

Another reason that I am so proud of the group is the diverse cross section of this cohort. Many of our past DofE award winners have said that this has been a life changing experience for them. Personally, I hope that you all continue to grow in your maturity and independence using the skills and techniques that have been developed. While overcoming the challenges of this past DofE year, these students have embodied St Edmund’s core values to nurture, to enrich, to study and to focus on the wider world.  

There are currently over 330,000 young people taking part in a DofE programme across the UK through a variety of centres including both state and independent schools, special schools, businesses, prisons, young offender institutions and youth groups. 

Well done to you all – you are fantastic, and I am very proud of every one of you!  

Mr Jukes

Duke of Edinburgh Centre Manager