At Hollywater, the pupils complete the Duke of Edinburgh Award as part of the Personal, Social, and Health education programme.  The award promotes independence, personal skill development and working as a team.

Pupils will be organised into teams (no more than 7 and a minimum of 4) taking into account their levels of independence and personal skills.

Most pupils will complete their Bronze award in YR10.  Some pupils will complete their Bronze award over 2 years during YR10 and YR11.  This is to allow them additional time to practise key elements and skills for their expedition section.

Those pupils achieving their Bronze award in 1 year, will continue on to their Silver award in YR11.

Pupils work with their class teachers to complete the four sections:

• Volunteering
• Skill
• Physical
• Expedition

Pupils are involved in the discussion about their aim and work within their teams for each section as part of their curriculum.  The sections take either 3 or 6 months to complete and are assessed by their class teachers or other Duke of Edinburgh leaders within school.  Silver teams may be assessed by an external assessor for their Expedition section.

The Expedition section includes night(s) away and the training for this continues all year, through extended walking activities which require some kit, purchased at the beginning of the year.

Initial costings:

• walking boots
• rucksack (minimum 30 litre)
• waterproof jacket and trousers

If there are any issues in purchasing this kit for the start of term, please speak to your child's class teacher as soon as possible.

This years' Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Teams organised fund raising for 3 different charities in the Autumn term.  The first event was for the McMillan Coffee Morning.

The next fundraising event was for Breast Cancer Awareness PINK Day.

Your child came to school dressed in PINK!  They took part in PINK activities during the afternoon.

Their final fundraising event was BBC Children in Need.

Your child came to school dressed in Yellow!  They took part in activities throughout the day, following the theme for Children in Need.

For their skill section, the Bronze and Silver Teams took part in Forest School sessions for 3 months.  They learnt how to build, light and cook on fires, made different items from wood including, football rattles and bows and arrows.

For their volunteering, the Silver team worked alongside the Deadwater Valley Rangers at Bordon Inclosure, Hogmoor Inclosure and Deadwater Valley Nature Reserve. 

This year's physical section for both the Bronze and Silver Teams was the Hollywater Triathlon.  Pupils undertook training in swimming, walking/running and cycling.  In March 2024, they completed their Triathlon.  All pupils were able to walk/run for 1hour, cycle for 1 hour and swim for 30 minutes.  An excellent effort!

The Duke of Edinburgh Award is run at all three levels of Bronze, Silver and Gold within Hollywater FE and each section of each award is completed within school in teams of 4 – 7 students. 

The Skills Section has involved working in the FE Café as part of a mini-enterprise project making bacon rolls for staff within the school.  Students have worked in teams rotating through different skills needed to run the café. Each week there is a team on food preparation, another on cleaning, and a third on deliveries and payments.  The café is very popular and the students are able to make a small profit that goes towards their activities.

The Physical Section is undertaken at Bordon Leisure Centre in the Everyone Active Gym.  Students visit the gym weekly during the Autumn and Spring terms, accessing the equipment and undertaking individual fitness programmes.

The Volunteering Section is part of the South Western Railways Station Adopters programme.  The FE students have ‘adopted’ Farnham Station which they visit every week in order to keep it clean and tidy through litter picking and reporting any damages to the Station Master.  The students thoroughly enjoy collecting the litter and there is often some friendly competition between the teams as to who can collect the most.  SWR provide official railway hi-viz vests for everyone to wear when out on site.

The Expedition Section requires the teams to undertake a practice and assessed expedition each year.  These vary slightly in duration depending on the level of award the students are working on but range from 2 days/1 night for Bronze up to 4 days/3 nights for Gold. 

Expedition training allows the teams to practice the skills they need to undertake their expedition and journeys.  Training includes putting up tents, packing rucksacks, cooking on trangias, and mastering the skills for the journey they have chosen.  Journey skills are not always just hiking, students have also undertaken training in cycling and canoeing in order to complete their expeditions using these forms of transport.

For 2022/23 our expeditions are taking place in the New Forest where hiking, cycling and canoeing form part of the 3 days there, and on the Avon & Kennet Canal where they are traversing the locks on an adapted barge.  Plans are already underway for even more adventurous expeditions in 2023/24 as we have a number of students going for Gold!

The Residential Section is only a formal requirement for Gold Award teams, 4 days/5 nights away working with people they do not know.  However, Bronze and Silver do not miss out as they come along too!  We are currently in the planning stages for our next residential which should take place in Wales at a very special school.  Our previous residential, at Avon Tyrell, was hugely successful and greatly improved the independence and life skills of the students.