Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Awards

Last year a group of our Year 9 students embarked on their Duke of Edinburgh bronze award. Over 12 months, they completed a huge amount of work to complete the requirements of the award. The award has four sections: Skills, Volunteering, Physical and Expedition and helps prepare young people for their future life and work.

Our students learnt and developed am amazing array of skills between them which for some have turned into hobbies but for others show a clear progression into the world of work.

Students volunteered in a wide range of settings and it was great to see how each student chose to give something back to the community – they amassed over 450 hours of volunteering as a group which is an incredible effort.

For the physical section of the award our students have been walking, running, dancing, playing football, golf and cricket, climbing and visiting the gym amongst other activities!

Finally our students completed their expeditions with a 2 day hike in the local area. Despite some difficult conditions with the weather our students worked brilliantly together in teams, showed tremendous character and did themselves proud – all whilst carrying their own heavy kit!

Following completion of each area of the award it seemed only right to invite students and their families into school to celebrate. The awards evening was a wonderful event where hot chocolate and cupcakes awaited our guests who battled through the heavy rain to join us and where students were presented with their awards and their success and achievements celebrated.

We would like to thank all families for their support. We would also like to thank the fantastic team of staff who made it possible to re-start the Duke of Edinburgh award at Longdendale. Thank you to Jeanette Nicholls, DofE Operations Officer for the Peak District and Tameside for all her support to the students and DofE staff team.

We are excited to be onboarding our next cohort of bronze award students as we speak and look forward to sharing their progress with you all over the next year. Good luck to our first group of students moving onto their silver award and many congratulations once again to every one of our students who successfully completed their bronze award – we hope you are as proud of your achievements as we are.