You retain a duty of care for your pupils and are responsible for their pastoral care. All being well you should not need to do anything other than sit at a roadside checkpoint, but should you be required you must be available to take pastoral care of your pupils.
The groups should be able to manage themselves and should not NEED input from us or you. We will be close enough to them that if there is an emergency they can contact us and we will go to them. You are free to go to a local pub / restaurant as long as able to enact your duty of care if called upon.
No – you can camp but because the expeditions are remotely supervised if you want to stay a short distance from the group in a B&B or similar you can. You must be contactable by phone and you must be able to get to the group. We will book and arrange a campsite for you, if you choose not to camp these arrangements are up to you.
We often ask that teachers sit in their mini-bus as one of the road Checkpoints, this allows you to see your pupils at least once in the day and because you know the pupils you will be in a good position to judge how they are coping. You wont be asked to navigate/walk to anywhere remote.
We will manage any incident and provide care/First Aid as required. You will be required to take pastoral care of any participants/groups that need to be taken off expedition.
You are responsible for all vehicle transport to/from/during expeditions. In essence this means that during the expedition you should have at least one minibus with a staff member able to drive it should a group get very lost and need picking up, or a pupil sprain their ankle and need picking up
Because you will be traveling with your pupils to/from expedition, and because you retain a duty of care for your pupils you must refer to your own off-site policy (or similar)
Yes.
The expedition requirements are that they must be of the correct duration and meet the minimum hours of planned activity. The duration is different at each level but it is a requirement that they complete the expedition as planned.
No.
However the environment for the expedition needs to ‘become progressively more challenging through the award levels‘. With this in mind the Silver expeditions must present more of a challenge than their Bronze, and the Gold must present more of a challenge than their Silver.
No.
DofE recommend that there is a ‘reasonable gap between practice and qualifying expeditions‘. While there is no specification for this amount of time participants will need time to recover from their practice, take on board any learning and then plan and prepare for their assessment.