Find below some of the most common questions we get asked about our DofE expeditions for schools and youth groups.
If you have a question which is not covered here, please don’t hesitate to contact us and a member of our team will be more than happy to answer your query.
The cost of expedition programmes depends on many variables, and usually ranges between £40 and £55 per participant per day. We are always keen to work on the quote with you to enable us to bring the price down and give the best price possible.
Contact us and we will arrange a bespoke quote for you.
Yes.
Not usually. If we are able to keep it to 3 or fewer groups on a campsite then we don’t need your staff there at all. If you would like us to operate a large group of bronze participants from a single campsite (for example) then we will require at least one member of school staff to camp out with us.
Yes, we allow for up to 50% of staff on any job to be from the client organisation. We will induct you as one of our freelancers and you will be able to work for us with other schools in future if you wish. You will have to work under our direction exactly as one of our freelancers would and we will give a discount for your time (currently £165 per day)
If you are qualified to operate in the terrain that your groups are out in then you are qualified to direct our staff. It is much more cost effective to hire us in this way using our staff to supplement yours. You will not be hiring us as an AAP as we will not be working to our procedures and risk assessments. You will need to induct our staff on your operating procedures and you will be ultimate responsible for the expedition.
When hiring from us we take care of the recruitment and vetting of staff, meaning that your HR department don’t have to. You many need to have 3 or 4 staff members on the books to ensure the cover you need for only one or two places. If a member of staff drops out due to illness at short notice we can simply replace them with an experienced and fully vetted member of staff usually at a moment’s notice. The downside is that you will have less control over the staff, probably less continuity of staff and it may cost a bit more.
Yes. We can provide staff to cover some or all of the DofE Expedition syllabus, we’ll just slot in and do as much or as little as you want.
Training 1:7 or 1:14
On in school training that we are running most staff will look after just 1 group. We do however have a number of staff who are either experienced teachers or who have been delivering our trainings for a number of years who will take 2 groups.
Practice expeditions: 1:7
On practice expeditions we each look after one group so that we can give extra help as required particularly on the first day, on subsequent days the ratio may on very rare occasions increase to 1:11 in non-remote terrain with the deployment of tracking technology.
Assessed expeditions in non-remote terrain 1:11
On bronze and some silver assessed expeditions we may put 2 staff out to supervise 3 groups. If this is the case then we will also deploy trackers to help the staff spend their time more efficiently and update their supervision plan through out the day.
Assessed expeditions in remote terrain 1:7
On assessed expeditions in remote terrain (usually gold but some silver) we will always staff with at least one member of staff per group. This is a safely requirement. There are times when external factors are the cause of things going wrong for a team, if this is the case then they could effect other teams too (terrible weather for example). In remote terrain, we feel that it is essential that all teams have a dedicated member or staff.
We have a number of different trackers that we deploy across our expeditions where we feel appropriate. There are many factors that come into us deciding to deploy a tracker or not including location of expedition, medical conditions within a group, staffing levels, availability of trackers, overall complexity of event.
Yes, we run international expeditions in the Alps and the Picos de Europa (Spain). Contact dave@lupineadventure.co.uk for more information.
